| Abstract: | Toxic mineral oils can migrate into foods from cardboard boxes made of recycled fibers. This is an emerging issue for the whole dry‐food‐packaging industry. Breakfast cereals, for example, are typically packaged in boxes with or without inner bags and consumed without further processing. Currently, fossil‐based high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) films are used as a major raw material for such inner bags. However, HDPE is a very poor barrier against mineral‐oil migration. Biobased coatings from cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs), hydroxypropylated xylan, and hydroxypropylated cellulose were applied onto biobased high‐density polyethylene (bio‐HDPE) films, and the mineral‐oil barrier properties were evaluated. All of the coated films significantly decreased the migration of n‐decane, isobutylbenzene, 1‐cyclohexylbutane, 1‐cyclohexylheptane, and 1‐cyclohexyldecane. Biobased barrier bags prepared from (2,2,6,6‐tetramethylpiperidin‐1‐yl)oxy oxidized CNF coated bio‐HDPE film protected the content to a great extent from mineral‐oil migration compared to noncoated bio‐HDPE and other commercial breakfast cereal‐bag films. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 44586. |
