Polypropylene: establishment of a rapid extraction test for overall migration limit compliance testing

✍ Scribed by Anthony O'Brien; Allison Leach; Ian Cooper

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 120 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-3214
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1522(200001/02)13:1<13::aid-pts488>3.0.co;2-c

✦ Synopsis

In order to demonstrate compliance with the overall migration limit given in EC Directive 90/128/EEC, overall migration tests are usually performed on the ®nished food packaging with food simulants. As a consequence, the packaging industry is confronted by a signi®cant compliance testing burden to demonstrate that their products are suitable for food use applications. However, the Directive also allows compliance with migration limits to be demonstrated by use of a more severe test'. In this study a more severe test' has been developed for polypropylene materials and articles involving extraction with the solvent, diethyl ether. The solvent was removed from the samples, evaporated to dryness and the mass of the non-volatile residue determined. This extracted residue represents the overall migration value. This procedure has been optimized so that it is simple and rapid to perform and, in general, gives slightly higher results compared to overall migration tests conducted with fatty and aqueous food simulants.