Screening of chemicals migrating from plastic food contact materials for oven and microwave applications by liquid and gas chromatography-Orbitrap mass spectrometry

Contamination of food with chemicals migrating from food contact materials (FCMs) is an important area of food safety. This study was aimed to investigate migration of chemicals from plastic FCMs used for mi-crowave and conventional oven heating. Migration tests were conducted for samples of microwave trays, microwave oven bags, and oven bags. GC-and LC-Orbitrap mass spectrometry (MS) was used for non-targeted screening and identification of chemicals with mass error < 5 ppm. A non-targeted identification approach was validated with isotopically labeled chemicals to establish acceptable criteria for identifica-tion of migrated compounds. A total of 74 migrated compounds were tentatively identified: 24 chemicals by GC-Orbitrap MS with electron ionization (EI), plus 35 and 19 by LC-Orbitrap MS electrospray ion-ization (ESI) with positive and negative polarities, respectively. Four migrated chemicals were identified by more than one instrumental analysis. Both intentionally added substances (IAS), i.e. additives used in the production of polymeric materials and plastics, and non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), i.e. derivatives and degradation/oxidation products of IAS, were identified among the migrated chemicals. The levels of 25 migrated chemicals were significantly different ( p < 0.05) between microwave treat-ments and conventional oven treatments, where 20 migrants had higher levels for microwave compared with 5 for conventional oven treatments. For several identified chemicals, no previous reports on their migration from FCMs were found. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

This study investigated the migration of chemicals from plastic food contact materials used in microwave and conventional oven heating. Both intentionally added substances (IAS) and non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) were identified among the migrated compounds. Significant differences in levels of migrated chemicals were observed between microwave treatments and conventional oven treatments, with more migrants detected in microwave treatments.