Study of the Migration of Three Model Substances from Low Density Polyethylene into Food Simulant and Fruit Juices

Abstract

In the present work, the migration of three chemicals, benzophenone, 1,4-diphenylbutadiene and Uvitex® OB from low-density polyethylene samples into the food simulant, 50% ethanol (v/v), was studied. The key parameters of the diffusion process, the partition and diffusion coefficients, were calculated by using a mathematical model based on Fick’s Second Law. As expected, the diffusion coefficients increased with temperature and the values obtained ranged between 3.87 × 10−11 and 1.00 × 10−8 cm2/s. Furthermore, the migration in different fruit juices was also evaluated and the results indicated that benzophenone migrated to a greater extent in comparison with the other two migrants in all beverages analyzed. To quantify the migrants, a high-performance liquid chromatographic method with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) was used. The separation was performed on an Ace 3 C18-HL column (30 × 3 mm, 3 μm particle size) and using a gradient elution system consisting of Milli-Q water and acetonitrile. The total analysis time did not exceed 8 min.

Keywords

• migration
• diffusion coefficients
• partition coefficients
• food simulant
• fruit juices