Impact of Partitioning in Short-Term Food Contact Applications Focused on Polymers in Support of Migration Modelling and Exposure Risk Assessment.

Food contact materials (FCMs) can transfer chemicals arising from their manufacture to food before consumption. Regulatory frameworks ensure consumer safety by prescribing methods for the assessment of FCMs that rely on migration testing either into real-life foods or food simulants. Standard migration testing conditions for single-use FCMs are justifiably conservative, employing recognized worst-case contact times and temperatures.

Repeated use food contact materials: A categorisation approach in support of risk assessment.

The current migration assessment requirements regarding safety of plastic food contact materials in Europe (e.g. kitchen utensils, kitchen appliances, packaging, etc.

Probabilistic migration modelling focused on functional barrier efficiency and low migration concepts in support of risk assessment.

Migration modelling provides reliable migration estimates from food-contact materials (FCM) to food or food simulants based on mass-transfer parameters like diffusion and partition coefficients related to individual materials. In most cases, mass-transfer parameters are not readily available from the literature and for this reason are estimated with a given uncertainty. Historically, uncertainty was accounted for by introducing upper limit concepts first, turning out to be of limited applicability due to highly overestimated migration results.

Feasibility study on the use of probabilistic migration modeling in support of exposure assessment from food contact materials.

The use of probabilistic approaches in exposure assessments of contaminants migrating from food packages is of increasing interest but the lack of concentration or migration data is often referred as a limitation. Data accounting for the variability and uncertainty that can be expected in migration, for example, due to heterogeneity in the packaging system, variation of the temperature along the distribution chain, and different time of consumption of each individual package, are required for probabilistic analysis. The objective of this work was to characterize quantitatively the uncertainty and variability in estimates of migration.

Investigation into the sorption of nitroglycerin and diazepam into PVC tubes and alternative tube materials during application.

Plastic bags and tubes are increasingly used for the storage and application of pharmaceutical formulations. The most common polymer material for drug application sets is plasticized poly(vinylchloride) (PVC). During application of pharmaceutical drug solution through PVC tubes, the polymer and the contact media interact which leads to leaching out of polymer additives or sorption of ingredients of the drug solution.