Use of Tenax® films to demonstrate the migration of chemical contaminants from cardboard into dry food

• Published in: Food additives & contaminants. Part A, Chemistry, analysis, control, exposure & risk assessment Vol. 34; no. 7; pp. 1261 - 1269
• Main Authors: Van Den Houwe, K., Evrard, C., Van Loco, J., Lynen, F., Van Hoeck, E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Taylor & Francis 03-07-2017; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Cardboard; Chemical contaminants; Contaminants; Food contamination; Food Contamination - analysis; Food Packaging; food simulant; Food sources; food-contact material; migration testing; Packaging materials; Polymers; Tenax; food simulant; food-contact material; Tenax; film; migration testing
• ISSN: 1944-0049; 1944-0057
• DOI: 10.1080/19440049.2017.1326067

Contaminants in food packaging are a challenge of our time since the packaging material itself has been found to represent a source of food contamination through the migration of substances from it. Before first use, packaging materials destined for the packaging of dry foods can be evaluated by performing migration experiments with the simulant for dry foods, Tenax®. This simulant is commercially available as a powder that is more difficult to handle during the migration experiments. This paper reports the development of a Tenax film. The film can be applied to the cardboard surface to conduct the migration test. After the migration is completed, the film can be easily extracted to determine the concentration of the contaminants in the film. Finally, the performance of the Tenax film was compared with the conventional Tenax powder for the evaluation of 15 model migrants.