Correlation of foodstuffs with ethanol–water mixtures with regard to the solubility of migrants from food contact materials

Today most foods are available in a packed form. During storage, the migration of chemical substances from food packaging materials into food may occur and may therefore be a potential source of consumer exposure. To protect the consumer, standard migration tests are laid down in Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011. When using those migration tests and applying additional conservative conventions, estimated exposure is linked with large uncertainties including a certain margin of safety. Thus the research project FACET was initiated within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission with the aim of developing a probabilistic migration modelling framework which allows one (1) to calculate migration into foods under real conditions of use; and (2) to deliver realistic concentration estimates for consumer exposure modelling for complex packaging materials (including multi-material multilayer structures). The aim was to carry out within the framework of the FACET project a comprehensive systematic study on the solubility behaviour of foodstuffs for potentially migrating organic chemicals. Therefore a rapid and convenient method was established to obtain partition coefficients between polymer and food, K P/F. With this method approximately 700 time-dependent kinetic experiments from spiked polyethylene films were performed using model migrants, foods and ethanol–water mixtures. The partition coefficients of migrants between polymer and food (K P/F) were compared with those obtained using ethanol–water mixtures (K P/F’s) to investigate whether an allocation of food groups with common migration behaviour to certain ethanol–water mixtures could be made. These studies have confirmed that the solubility of a migrant is mainly dependent on the fat content in the food and on the ethanol concentration of ethanol–water mixtures. Therefore dissolution properties of generic food groups for migrants can be assigned to those of ethanol–water mixtures. All foodstuffs (including dry foods) when allocated to FACET model food group codes can be classified into a reduced number of food categories each represented by a corresponding ethanol–water equivalency.