PROGRAMME

The increasing importance of sustainability promotes the development of food contact materials (FCMs) that are safe for the consumers and environmentally friendly. The progressive replacement of ‘‘conventional’’ plastic materials with recycled plastics as well as bio-based and biodegradable polymers has already being enforced by several countries worldwide. With the safety assessment of commonly used plastic materials being still a work under progress, the evaluation of new materials and materials of a more complex nature opposes a greater challenge to the scientific community. Even though the European Regulation (EU) 10/2011 includes the requirement that FCM manufacturers evaluate their products with respect to intentionally and non-intentionally added substances (IAS & NIAS) according to scientifically recognized methods of risk assessment, no guidelines for carrying out such a procedure are provided by the responsible authorities. This gab in the existing legislation can be attributed to the complex and challenging nature of this task. The difficulties in the analysis of food migrants are resulting, among others, from the many existing chemical classes of IAS and NIAS, the lack of analytical standards for many of them and the fact that many of these substances (e.g. oligomers) are not included in chemical or spectral databases. Consequently, the analysis of food migrants requires the use of advanced highly sensitive analytical techniques and non-targeted screening approaches. The overall objective of this research work is to expand the existing IAS and NIAS screening approaches, allowing a more widespread and holistic overview of the food contaminants originating from the packaging materials and the potential toxicological effects on the consumers. To facilitate this purpose, innovative, comprehensive and practice-oriented next generation screening methodologies are developed, utilizing state-of-the-art instrumentation and sophisticated data evaluation procedures. In particular, we developed GC-MS/MS and GC-APCI-QTOFMS methods for the target screening of volatile IAS & NIAS, as well as LC-MS/MS and LC-ESI-QTOFMS methods for corresponding migrants of low volatility, thermal instability and high polarity. Particularly the high resolution mass spectrometric (HRMS) methods applied were utilized for further suspect and non-target screening and retrospective analysis of the obtained FCMs. For these screening procedures the entire spectrum of food simulants was evaluated with different migration protocols being employed, depending on the intended use of the analyzed samples. Risk assessment of the identified migrating compounds is also performed using the corresponding legislation, online tools and in-house built software. The application of these workflows into a large set of products and the subsequent complete screening of migrating chemical contaminants will promote the production of inert and consequently organoleptic neutral and safe next generation FCMs. In addition, the identification of toxic substances would allow us to propose specific protective measures to the competent authorities and increase the consciousness of citizens towards packaged food. Thus, this work will assess public health risks, by facing current and future challenges.