Food contact materials (FCMs) can transfer harmful substances into food, which can pose risks to human health. Identification at low levels is key to keeping consumers safe.
Packaging and food contact material analysis
Food contact material testing can be difficult
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Food contact materials (FCMs) encompass any articles designed to come into contact with food throughout various stages, from production, processing, storage, to serving. This category includes not only packaging materials but also tableware, cooking utensils, and storage containers.
Analysing food contact materials is a complex application with several challenges. SCIEX offers advanced analytical solutions with capabilties that can help food testing laboratories overcome these challenges:
- Sensitivity: One of the primary concerns with FCMs is the potential migration of chemicals into food. Analytical methods must be able to accurately measure trace levels of contaminants, often at parts-per-billion (ppb) or even parts-per-trillion (ppt) levels. SCIEX technology provides industry-leading instrumental sensitivity to help ensure the protection of human health.
- Chemical Complexity: FCMs are often composed of complex mixtures of chemicals, including polymers, additives, coatings, adhesives, and printing inks. SCIEX provides powerful hardware and software solutions to distinguish analytes from interferences, supported by the latest libraries to give you additional confidence in your discoveries.
- Non-Intentionally Added Substances (NIAS): FCMs may contain non-intentionally added substances, including impurities, reaction products, degradation byproducts, and contaminants from manufacturing processes. Non-targeted analysis with SCIEX's accurate mass spectrometry systems enables the identification of unknown or unexpected chemical contaminants.
- Matrix Interferences: Food matrices can interfere with the analysis of migrating compounds from FCMs, leading to reduced sensitivity or false positive/negative results. SCIEX source design is developed to keep the mass spectrometer clean when working with dirty matrices.
- Reliance on libraries: The availability of analytical standards for FCM analysis is limited compared to other fields. SCIEX' spectral libraries, such as the extractables & leachables (E&L) library, enables specific, sensitive, and accurate compound identification.
3 workflows for extractables & leachables in food packaging
Together with a SCIEX user
E&L compounds have long been a human health concern, and regulatory bodies across the world have safety standards in place for the presence of these substances in FCMs. While these regulations contain lists of compounds that are subject to limits or prohibitions, these lists are not the final word on all possible contaminants. To comply with standards and protect human health, food testing laboratories need to be able to accurately identify not only known compounds, but also unknown ones in FCMs. To help address this need, scientists at SCIEX and TÜV Rheinland developed a comprehensive mass spectrometry solution for the characterization of extractables and leachables in food packaging.
Using the ZenoTOF 7600 system, 3 workflows were explored: suspect screening, unknown screening and MRMHR quantitation. The combined workflows demonstrated the benefits of each acquisition mode to fully characterize and quantify compounds in food contact materials. Both MS/MS libraries from NIST and SCIEX were used to streamline the data processing workflow, reducing the number of compounds that required manual review. The following results demonstrated a method capable of easily achieving low-level quantitation of E&L compounds in FCMs:
- The E&L MS/MS library from SCIEX, and an E&L subset of the NIST library provided MS/MS spectra for more than 2400 compounds, enabling confident compound identification
- Both qualitative and quantitative data were processed and reported within a single workspace, removing the need for data export and additional software packages
- MRMHR acquisition mode enabled the highest levels of sensitivity and specificity, with limits of quantitation (LOQs) as low as 0.1µg/L and calibration ranges between 0.1 and 100µg/L
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Technical note
Combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of food packaging materials using the ZenoTOF 7600 system
This technical note describes a method for the characterization of E&L compounds in food packaging using the ZenoTOF 7600 system.
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Accurate mass extractables & leachables open access high-resolution MS/MS spectral library
Access an accurate mass E&L library of 724 compounds containing high quality accurate mass spectra for relevant chemical species and moieties.
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Technical note
Nontargeted and suspect screening of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in food contact materials
Custom calculations and metric plots in SCIEX OS software enabled common data reduction strategies for identifying prospective PFAS features from NTA, such as background signal removal, Kendrick mass defect filtering and homologous series searching.
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Technical note
A new level of accurate quantitation for 29 phthalate esters in food simulants using LC-MS/MS
This technical note demonstrates a novel LC-MS/MS method that quantified 29 phthalate esters (phthalates, PEs) at ng/mL (ppb) detection limits in 4 food simulants, as described by the EU regulation on plastic food contact materials.1 Laboratory methods were improved to reduce background contamination, yielding limits of quantitation (LOQs) as low as 0.025 ng/mL for most PEs using the QTRAP 6500+ system.
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Technical note
Determination of Irganox compounds extracted from food packaging using 4 food simulants
The method presented in this technical note focuses on extractables found in food packaging. The method was developed for the quantification of a diverse suite of 16 Irganox compounds found in food packaging using 4 food simulants, as outlined by the EU regulations.
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Technical note
Rapid identification and quantification of 27 primary aromatic amines in kitchen utensils
In this technical note, a method was developed to analyze 27 primary aromatic amines (PAAs) in food contact materials (FCMs). The method achieved LOQs of 0.001-0.50 ng/mL, which correspond to detection limits several orders of magnitude lower than EU regulation mandate.