Potential migration of organic pollutants from recycled packaging materials into dry food

Paperboard packages represent a large and constantly growing part of the food packaging industry. To protect the environment the use of recycled paper as food contact material has increased. The safety of recycled fiber-based materials for food contact applications is largely dictated by the ability of post-consumer contaminants to be absorbed into recycled materials and later released by the packaging material and trapped on the food. In the present work the migration of different organic surrogates from recycled paper into a dry food (high fat milk powder) has been investigated using a method based on solvent extraction and GC-FID quantification. Results showed that the extractive power of the food powder, under the experimental conditions used, is high and that migration occurs rapidly. The proportion of substances migrated to food was strongly dependent on the nature of the paper samples, the fat content of the food and the chemical nature and volatility of the migrant.