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Last Update: 01/31/00

Direct Thermal Analysis of Plastic Food Wraps Using the Short Path Thermal Desorption System

INTRODUCTION

There is presently a great deal of concern for the potential health risks due to the consumption of food products contaminated with packaging material residues. When using these packaging materials for food preparation at high temperatures (the boiling point of water and such as those encountered in microwave ovens), the problem may become exacerbated by the thermal leaching of the packaging material residues from the packaging film and eventual diffusion into the food products. This concern for the contamination of food products by leaching of residual components from the packaging materials will continue to be of major concern for both the scientific community and the food industry, especially with the increased use of recycled papers and plastics. A study was undertaken to detect and identify the low level volatile and semi-volatiles present in commercially available microwave safe plastic food wraps and to determine the viability of this technique for the analyses of other packaging material. The new Short Path Thermal Desorption system from Scientific Instrument Services was utilized to permit the direct volatilization of samples into the GC injection port without any prior solvent extraction or without the use of solvent or vapor traps. This technique permits the maximum sensitivity of analysis due to this direct injection technique and permits the capillary Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS) analyses of these samples. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the versatility of the technique to determine the volatile and semi-volatile residues from the plastic food wraps when they are subjected to conditions such as those encountered in microwave ovens. This work closely correlates with the study done at Rutgers Food Science Department by Thomas Hartman (1), in which Dr. Hartman studied the applicability of this technique to identify the off-odors in packaging films.

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