Determinação do potencial de migração de embalagens plásticas para alimentos

Abstract

Packaging is the recipient destined to guarantee the conservation, transport and handling of food and it has a fundamental relevance on the preservation of the food during all shelf life. The package must be nontoxic, must protect the food against moisture, gas, flavor. Migration tests evaluate the quantity of substances that might migrate from the packaging to the food. If this migration occurs out of the limits stablished by the law, it might cause adverse effects on the consumers. These testes are performed with simulants that are substances that copy the behavior of a group of food that has the same characteristics. In this context, this paper aimed to evaluate the migration potential from plastic packaging used to keep food. Tests with three types of packaging, of different brands, made out of polypropylene, purchased at the local market and codified as 1, 2 and 3 and in duplicate. The simulants used were soy oil and 3% acetic acid. The test conditions were: freezing at -18ºC for 24 hours, followed by heating in microwave oven to 90ºC; refrigeration at 10ºC for 10 days and ambient temperature (25ºC) for 10 days.Each test condition was performed five times, with each packaging, in order to verify to migration potential in relation to the reuse of the packaging. The migration quantification was made by gravimetry, and by the analysis of the results it was observed that the migration does not show a constant behavior either in relation to the reuse of the packaging, or in relation to the duplicates of the tested packaging, showing that the migration phenomenon is not influenced only by the experimental conditions, but also by the own characteristics of the packaging, like: brand, quality, thickness and manufacturing batch. It was also observed that the simulant soy oil benefited more the migration of the components of the packaging than the acetic acid, and the packaging that most benefited the migration was the packaging codified as 3. .