The migration of Irganox 1010 antioxidant from high-density polyethylene and polypropylene into a series of potential fatty-food simulants

Alternatives to highly-volatile ethanol or analytically complex cooking oil were examined as potential fatty-food simulants which would undergo high-temperature exposures to food-packaging polymers in food-packaging evaluation studies. The alternatives consisted of alcohols containing four to eight carbons. As test cases, the migration of Irganox 1010 antioxidant from high-density polyethylene and polypropylene into the higher alcohols was compared to the migration of Irganox 1010 into aqueous ethanol solutions and cooking oil, the US Food and Drug Administration's currently recommended fatty-food simulants. The data obtained showed slightly greater migration of the antioxidant into 95% ethanol than into cooking oil, and slightly less migration into 50% ethanol than into cooking oil. The migration of the antioxidant into the alcohols consisting of four or more carbons was much greater than the migration observed in cooking oil. In many experiments the polymers became depleted of the antioxidant prior to the end of the short, high-temperature exposure period (i.e. 2 h at 250 degrees F) to the higher alcohols. Also, for all experiments run under the same time/temperature/simulant conditions, migration of the antioxidant was greater from polypropylene than from high-density polyethylene. Diffusion coefficients generated for 95% ethanol and corn oil from these data compare closely with data from the literature.