[Hygiene of packages of food, drugs, etc].
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Allergens↗
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Estrogenic effects of food wrap packaging xenoestrogens and flavonoids in female Wistar rats: a comparative study.
The objective of this study was to compare the estrogenicity of xenoestrogens found in food wrap packaging and phytoestrogen flavonoids. Uterotrophic and vaginal cornification assays were performed on immature and ovariectomized rats. Genistein, bisphenol F, and octylphenol were identified as estrogenic only in immature rats. Using vaginal cornification as a more specific estrogenic parameter, all tested compounds except tangeretin were active in immature rats. While apigenin and kaempferol appeared to have low estrogenic activity, they potentialized the uterotrophic effect of 17beta-estradiol in immature rats. These data showed that (i) phytoestrogens like genistein can be as potent or even more estrogenic than compounds found in food wrap packaging, (ii) immature rats appear to be a more sensitive in vivo model than ovariectomized rats in term of estrogenicity, (iii) the vaginal cornification assay could be a sensitive and useful test to detect weak estrogenic compounds to which humans can be exposed via food.
Animals↗
Effectiveness of polypropylene film as a barrier to migration from recycled paperboard packaging to fatty and high-moisture food.
The capability of a polypropylene (PP) film barrier to prevent migration of residual contaminants from recycled paperboard into food simulants was studied. Anthracene, benzophenone, methyl stearate and pentachlorophenol were chosen as chemical surrogates to represent classes of contaminants likely to be found in recycled paper/paperboard. Each surrogate was spiked into a test specimen made of seven thin virgin paper layers at concentrations of 1-50 mg kg(-1). Test specimen were dried, stacked and sandwiched with PP films, laminated with PP film and then subjected to migration experiments using a compression cell maintained at 100 degrees C for 2 h. The concentration of the surrogates in the test specimen and in 95% ethanol, isopropanol and 10% ethanol food-simulating solvents was determined by gas chromatography with flame ionization and electron capture detection. The results show that although the concentrations of the surrogates in the food simulants decreased with an increase in PP film thickness, they were still high and generally resulted in dietary concentrations >0.5 microg kg(-1), the level that US Food and Drug Administration would equate with negligible risk for a contaminant migrating from food packaging. Only at the lowest spiking level (1 mg kg(-1) benzophenone) did migration from the paperboard through a 0.127-mm PP film result in a dietary concentration of </=0.5 microg kg(-1). Therefore, it can be concluded that for an extended time at 100 degrees C, PP would not be an acceptable barrier to migration of contaminants that are expected to be in post-consumer paper/paperboard.
Conservation of Natural Resources↗
[Determination of the overall migration of chemicals from the plastic packaging into the aqueous models of food using the EU methods].
Overall migration from food plastic packaging to aquatic food simulants (distilled water, 3% acetic acid) was determined according to the EU methods. Testing conditions (time and temperature) reflected normal use of tested food packaging. The overall migration studies using different food simulants (distilled water, 3% acetic acid) shows that the migration rate was very low, far below the allowed limit (10 mg/dm2). The high results of overall migration into 3% acetic acid (average 250.2 mg/dm2), markedly exceeding the allowed limit, was found in the case of multilayer film. It means that the multilayer film tested does not comply with the migration limit and it can not be used as a food packaging for the sour foodstuffs of pH below 4.5. Differences between the magnitude of overall migration into distilled water (0.5-1.1 mg/dm2) and 3% acetic acid are probably due to the presence of easy washable substances into the sour medium. From that reason the application of such food packaging materials must be limited.
Acetic Acid↗
Active and intelligent packaging for food: is it the future?
This paper gives an overview of the legal consequences of a new EU framework regulation on food contact materials which includes controls on active and intelligent packaging. Recent developments in active and intelligent packaging systems are described, two examples of which aim at achieving improvements in quality and safety of food products. The first one is an on-command preservative-releasing packaging system. The second system is an intelligent concept, based on the development of a non-invasive microbial growth sensor to monitor the sterility of food products.
Environmental Exposure↗
Tin in canned food: a review and understanding of occurrence and effect.
Tinplate is light gauge, steel sheet or strip, coated on both sides with commercially pure tin and has been used for well over a hundred years as a robust form of food packaging. Altogether, about 25,000 million food cans are produced and filled in Europe per annum, about 20% of these having plain internal (unlacquered) tin-coated steel bodies. Worldwide, the total for food packaging is approximately 80,000 million cans. Tinplate is also extensively used for the production of beverage cans. Europe produces and fills over 15,000 million tinplate beverage cans per annum all of which are internally lacquered. The use of tinplate for food and beverage packaging, will result in some tin dissolving into the food content, particularly when plain uncoated internal surfaces are used. The Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake for tin is 14 mg/kg body weight and recommended maximum permissible levels of tin in food are typically 250 mg/kg (200 mg/kg UK) for solid foods and 150 mg/kg for beverages. However, the question arises as to whether evidence exists that such elevated levels of tin in food in any way constitute a risk to human health. This review considers the factors affecting the dissolution of tin, the reported measurements/surveys of actual levels of tin in canned foods and the studies and reports of acute (short term) toxicity relating to the ingestion of elevated levels of tin in food products. Chronic studies are mentioned, but are not covered in detail, since the review is mainly concerned with possible effects from the ingestion of single high doses. From published data, there appears to be a small amount of evidence suggesting that consumption of food or beverages containing tin at concentrations at or below 200 ppm has caused adverse gastrointestinal effects in an unknown but possibly small proportion of those exposed. However, the evidence supporting this assertion is derived from reports of adverse effects which offer data that are limited, incomplete or of uncertain veracity. Clinical studies provide greater confidence regarding the effects of exposure concentration and dose, but few relevant studies have been made. Adverse gastrointestinal effects were observed in limited clinical studies at concentrations of 700 ppm or above, although no adverse gastrointestinal effects were also reported in two studies at higher concentrations. Overall, therefore, the published data do not present a particularly comprehensive profile on the toxic hazard to man of acute exposure to divalent inorganic tin. A food survey suggested that the contents of almost 4% of plain internal tinplate food cans contain over 150 mg/kg of tin and over 2.5 million such cans are consumed every year in the UK alone. Despite this, in the last 25 years, there have been no reports of acute effects attributable to tin contamination in the range 100-200 ppm. These facts strongly suggest that there is little evidence for an association between the consumption of food containing tin at concentrations up to 200 ppm and significant acute adverse gastrointestinal effects. Clearly though, only further clinical studies will generate unequivocal evidence that current legislative limits provide safe levels for adults in the general population.
Animals↗
[EXAMINATION OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF A LEGISLATION RELATIVE TO THE PACKAGING OF FOOD PRODUCTS IN PLASTIC MATERIALS].
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Belgium↗
Evaluation of biohazards in dehydrated biofilms on foodstuff packaging.
Plastic materials used for food packaging are clean but not sterile when the food is just packaged. Accidental wet contamination may occur at every moment between packaging and opening by the consumer: on polyethylene (PET), bacteria may adhere strongly and constitute a biofilm in less than 24 h. By rolling on themselves, PET sheets may contaminate food. We tried to show that contact with salted foodstuffs favoured microbial recovery. Four strains were chosen to perform biofilms on PET: Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli. Biofilms were dried up 24 h. Biofilm bacteria were stressed by adhesion, by starvation and by dehydration. However, they were capable of recovery in salted solutions or media, probably because one (or more) stress protected them against another stress. Stress was demonstrated by stress protein production, by mean of electrophoresis, and membrane lesions by mean of flow cytometry. Stress recovery was performed in aqueous salted solutions or salted brain-heart infusion with NaCl 9, 15, 20 and 30 g/l. Staphylococci were more sensitive to these stresses and recovery was a function of salt concentration. Gram-negative bacteria were little affected by stresses; salt effects were less important. If all these biofilms were capable of recovery from stresses in salted media, flexible PET could possibly lead to a health hazard when it is used for wet salt meats, e.g.
Bacterial Adhesion↗
Effectiveness of some recent antimicrobial packaging concepts.
A new type of active packaging is the combination of food-packaging materials with antimicrobial substances to control microbial surface contamination of foods. For both migrating and non-migrating antimicrobial materials, intensive contact between the food product and packaging material is required and therefore potential food applications include especially vacuum or skin-packaged products, e.g. vacuum-packaged meat, fish, poultry or cheese. Several antimicrobial compounds have been combined with different types of carriers (plastic and rubber articles, paper-based materials, textile fibrils and food-packaging materials). Until now, however, few antimicrobial concepts have found applications as a food-packaging material. Antimicrobial packaging materials cannot legally be used in the EU at the moment. The potential use would require amendments of several different legal texts involving areas such as food additives, food packaging, hygiene, etc. The main objective of this paper is to provide a state of the art about the different types of antimicrobial concepts, their experimental development and commercialization, and to present a case study summarizing the results of investigations on the feasibility of a low-density polyethylene (LDPE)-film containing triclosan to inhibit microbial growth on food surfaces and consequently prolong shelf-life or improve microbial food safety. In contrast with the strong antimicrobial effect in in-vitro simulated vacuum-packaged conditions against the psychrotrophic food pathogen L. monocytogenes, the 1000 mg kg(-1) containing triclosan film did not effectively reduce spoilage bacteria and growth of L. monocytogenes on refrigerated vacuum-packaged chicken breasts stored at 7 degrees C.
Animals↗
Food and drink packaging: who is complaining and who should be complaining.
This paper reports a questionnaire survey of shoppers at four supermarket stores in the UK. Regression analyses were used to determine factors in consumer complaints with the packaging of food and drink products. Neuroticism and treatment in hospital for an accident involving packaging in the last 3 years were significant associates. Analyses on who was most likely to suffer accidents or injuries while opening food and drink packaging indicated that handedness (that is, being left handed made accidents more likely) and scoring low on a measure of personal control during decision-making were significant associates. Analyses on who suffered the most serious accidents and injuries whilst opening food and drink packaging revealed that the decision-making style of social resistance (that is, the extent to which you resist asking for help from others) was related to susceptibility to the most severe accidents. These findings imply that individual factors (including both personal characteristics and personality traits) should be taken into account when considering the openability of packaging. The results of this study indicate that manufacturers should ensure that novel packaging closures have been tested on left handers in order to discover any unique difficulties for this sub-group, that packaging opening tools specifically for left-handed people should be made available and that manufacturers of packaging should always look at a 'worst case scenario' for their packaging closures as it is evident that some people will continue to struggle with difficult packaging until either they open it or they have injured themselves.
Accidents↗
Modelling the effect of oil/fat content in food systems on flavour absorption by LLDPE.
One of the phenomena in food-packaging interactions is flavour absorption. Absorption of flavour compounds from food products into food-packaging materials can result in loss of flavour compounds or an unbalance in the flavour profile changing a product's quality. The food matrix influences the amounts of absorbed flavour compounds; the presence of oil or fat especially determines the ability to absorb flavour compounds from the food to the package. On the other hand, the polarity of the flavour compound itself is a characteristic that also influences the level of absorption into synthetic polymers. A model based on the effect of the polarity (logP) of flavour compounds and on their partitioning coefficients between the food (matrix) and the packaging material is described. The model can be used for predicting absorption of flavour compounds from foods into LLDPE. However, an attempt to apply the proposed model on real foods shows serious limitations of the model for (very) low fat products. Predictive values deviate from the measured values, probably due to other interaction phenomena, e.g. with proteins. Predictive and measured values from a product with a substantial amount of fat match much better, suggesting that the model is valid for products having a substantial amount of (free) fat.
Absorption↗
Presentation and experimental verification of a physico-mathematical model describing the migration across functional barrier layers into foodstuffs.
For several years there has been an ongoing controversial scientific discussion about the so-called functional barrier concept which, although mostly connected with the re-use of recycled plastics for food packaging, has general relevance and is principally applicable to any type of multilayer structure. Concerning the definition of the efficiency of a functional barrier there exists different understandings, ranging from the absolute physical barrier requirement over the acceptance of toxicologically insignificant migration to a completely lag time-related definition. The starting point of this work was the fact that functional barriers are in most cases already in-situ-contaminated due to the thermally extreme coextrusion conditions of the manufacturing process. As a consequence, middle layer contaminants may already have penetrated the functional barrier of a food package and may provide direct contact with the foodstuff at the time when the package is filled. Nevertheless, depending on the individual food package parameters, the remaining functional barrier efficiency can still prevent inadmissible migration. To meet this real-life situation and to describe the underlying migration process a theoretical migration model was developed and experimentally verified in this work using artificially-contaminated multilayer HIPS sheets with different functional barrier thicknesses. An important result of this study was the finding that compared with the interdiffusion between the package's layers in situ during their formation in the coextrusion process, the interdiffusion at ambient temperature until the filling time point of the package is able to be neglected.
Chlorobenzenes↗
Determination of isopropyl-9H-thioxanthen-9-one in packaged beverages by solid-phase extraction clean-up and liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry detection.
A simple method was developed and validated for the trace determination of 2-isopropylthioxanthone (ITX) in packaged drinks. Samples were extracted from the food matrix using acetonitrile:water (60:40, v/v), and further subjected to clean-up and preconcentration using solid-phase extraction prior to analysis by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The use of 2-isopropyl-[(2)H7]thioxanthen-9-one was incorporated into the method as an internal standard. Excellent 3-day interday precision data (RSD 0.72%, n=10), and intraday precision data (RSD 0.52%, n=10) were obtained on a 0.10 microg/L standard solution. Spiked samples (n=8) were used to gauge the accuracy of the method at the concentration levels of 2.5, 100, and 500 microg/kg in food; recoveries ranged from 97.0 to 103.0%. These excellent validation data suggest the exciting possibility of using this method for the determination of low levels of ITX migrating from printed food packaging materials into beverages with a method quantitation limit of 0.50 microg/kg. For the first time, analysis on a range of milk, juice, tea and yoghurt drinks, as well as their respective food packaging materials were performed for comparative studies on their ITX content.
Beverages↗
Migration of inorganic contaminants into dry food from packaging made from recycled paper and board.
A radiotracer method was applied to the measurement of inorganic contaminants migrating into food. The method was applied to the study of 10 samples of recycled paper and board. The only elements detected in the static migration test were zinc and iron, at concentrations close to the detection limit. Samples of rice, oats, custard powder, mushrooms and fries showed that traces of these elements had migrated from the packaging. The migration was limited to less than 1%, with the exception of the mushrooms, where the decomposition of the food had resulted in a 12.5% transfer of zinc from the mushroom bag after 8 days, equivalent to migration of 0.022 mg dm(-2). Shaking had no effect on migration, except in one case of custard powder where migration occurred at a level equivalent to 0.002 mg dm(-2). The maximum migration determined in the present study was 4.8 microg zinc and 2.6 microg iron, which is negligible when compared with the recommended daily intakes of 15 and 14 mg, respectively. When Tenax was tested as a food simulant, no zinc was detected (< 0.001 mg dm(-2)), although slight migration (0.001 mg dm(-2)) occurred into food.
Conservation of Natural Resources↗
Oestrogenicity of paper and cardboard extracts used as food containers.
Bisphenol-A (BPA), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which are common chemical residues in food-packaging materials, were investigated in paper and cardboard containers used for take-away food. The oestrogenicity of aqueous extracts was tested in E-Screen bioassay and analysis carried out by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Oestrogenicity was demonstrated in 90% of extracts (geometric mean [GM] = 11.97 pM oestradiol equivalents g(-1)). DEHP, DBP, and BPA (GM = 341.74, 37.59, and 2.38 ng g(-1) of material) were present in 77.50, 67.50, and 47.50% of samples, respectively. In bivariate analyses, no significant association was found between the levels of these chemicals and oestrogenicity in cardboard/paper extracts. A close-to-significant association was found between oestrogenicity and DBP (beta = 1.25; p = 0.06) in paper extracts, which reached statistical significance in multivariate analysis (beta = 1.61; p = 0.03). Paper and cardboard used in food packaging may contribute to the inadvertent exposure of consumers to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Benzhydryl Compounds↗
Hydrolysis studies on oleamide in simulated gastrointestinal fluids.
Hydrolysis studies using simulated gastrointestinal fluids have been performed on oleamide, an important fatty acid amide slip additive used in plastics food packaging. Experiments have been conducted using the simulated gastrointestinal fluids, specified by the Scientific Committee for Food for hydrolysis studies, and with slightly modified preparations believed to be more representative of the in vivo situation. The degree of hydrolysis in simulated gastric fluids was found to be negligible after incubation for 4 h at 37 degrees C. Addition of 'bile salts' to simulated intestinal fluid was found to significantly increase the degree of hydrolysis to about 95% loss of oleamide after incubation for 4 h at 37 degrees C. Stoichiometric formation of oleic acid, an innocuous substance, was also demonstrated. It has therefore been concluded that ingestion of the very low levels of oleamide expected to migrate into most foods from food packaging is unlikely to pose a threat to the health of the consumer.
Bile Acids and Salts↗
Food allergen labeling in the USA and Europe.
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The ingredient statement on the label of packaged foods is an important source of information for food-allergic consumers. New legislation in the USA and European Union will increase the amount of information available to food-allergic consumers. RECENT FINDINGS: The USA has implemented the Food Allergen Labeling & Consumer Protection Act, which mandates use of clear labeling and source labeling of ingredients derived from commonly allergenic sources. Similarly, the European Union is implementing new regulations that mandate the source labeling of ingredients derived from commonly allergenic foods and fuller disclosure of allergenic food components, even when present in small amounts. The food industry is providing consumers with information relating to the presence of allergenic residues by adding voluntary advisory statements, such as 'may contain peanuts'. SUMMARY: Food-allergic consumers are advised to follow specific strict avoidance diets that exclude allergenic foods and ingredients derived from these foods. Thus individuals must avoid potentially hazardous residues of the allergenic food that might occur as the result of common practices in the food industry. The ingredient statement on packaged food labels now contains more information than ever before.
Allergens↗
Selection of human consumables for future space missions.
Consumables for human spaceflight include oxygen, water, food and food packaging, personal hygiene items, and clothing. This paper deals with the requirements for food and water, and their impact on waste product generation. Just as urbanization of society has been made possible by improved food processing and packaging, manned spaceflight has benefitted from this technology. The downside of this technology is increased food package waste product. Since consumables make up a major portion of the vehicle onboard stowage and generate most of the waste products, selection of consumables is a very critical process. Food and package waste comprise the majority of the trash generated on the current shuttle orbiter missions. Plans for future missions must include accurate assessment of the waste products to be generated, and the methods for processing and disposing of these wastes.
Clothing↗