A study on the migration of organic pollutants from recycled paperboard packaging materials to solid food matrices

Paper and board are widely used as food packaging materials, mainly for disposable products. As public interest in conservation of natural resources has accelerated in the past several years, the use of recycled paper and board has increased. Recycled fiber materials can be used in certain limits as food contact materials. 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. The present work was undertaken with the aim of investigating the physicochemical behavior of selected model contaminants on paper and board, in contact with foodstuffs thus producing a fundamental set of data about their mobility from recycled paper and board into foods. More specifically, the kinetics of migration of selected model contaminants (surrogates) from contaminated recycled paper packaging samples into dry foodstuffs with different fat content was studied using a method based on solvent extraction and GC-FID quantification. Results showed the ability of selected contaminants of various types and various volatilities to potentially transfer to dry foods. The proportion of substances migrated to food was strongly dependent on the nature of the paper samples, fat content of the food, chemical nature and volatility of the migrant. The highest level of migration of organic pollutants was observed for the substrate with the highest fat content. Furthermore, it is shown that contact time and temperature have a significant effect on migration of model contaminants into foods.