Monitoring of contaminants in recycled paperboard for food contact applications

BACKGROUND: The lack of harmonized European legislation on food packaging led the Confederation of European Paper Industries to the proposal of a voluntary Industry Guideline for the compliance of paper and board materials for food contact applications. In our work, a previously established method for the simultaneous determination of contaminants commonly found in recycled paperboard was improved and its applicability as quality control tool in the paper industry was also assessed. The method involves a sample pre-treatment followed by GC-MS analysis. RESULTS: For analysis, paperboard samples were collected both from three sections of the same reel and from different reels belonging to the same production run. Results highlighted no significant differences in terms of contaminants distribution among samples, which ensured good sampling representativeness. The performance of the method was considerably improved in terms of linearity range, limits of detection and quantification (5 to 2 fold lower) by using a quadrupole GC-MS instead of an ion trap GC-MS. CONCLUSION: The proposed method could offer a key strategy for analysis of benzophenonederivatives, diisopropyl naphthalene and phthalates in recycled paperboard in order to assess compliance of food packaging with the voluntary limits recommended by the Industry Guideline.