CHAPTER 7. Risk Assessment of Plastic Packaging for Food Applications

Food safety related to packaging materials and especially to plastics is nowadays under close scrutiny. Most plastics are able to transfer substances to the packaged food and the evaluation of risk assessment is essential. This chapter describes the main aspects of this topic, with a focus on multilayer, oxo-biodegradable plastics, recycled polymers, printing inks, non-intentionally added substances (NIAS), oligomers, active packaging and nanomaterials. Risk assessment needs to be applied to all packaging materials, which requires the identification and quantification of each individual compound released from the packaging to the food or food simulants. The last section is dedicated to analytical procedures applied for this purpose, which are challenging in the study of NIAS and risk assessment. Several real examples are included in which mass spectrometry plays an essential role.