Plastic packaging materials for food : barrier function, mass transport, quality assurance, and legislation

Preservation of quality through packaging. Characteristics of plastic materials. Additives for plastics and their transformation products. Partition coefficients. Models for diffusion in polymers. Prediction of diffusion coefficients in gases, liquids, amorphous solids and plastic materials using an uniform model. Transport equations and their solutions. Numerical solutions of the diffusion equation. Permeation of gases, water vapor and volatile organic compounds. Migration of plastic constituents. Migration from food packaging: Regulatory considerations for estimating exposure. European Community legislation on materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. Sensory problems caused by food and packaging interactions. Case study: styrene monomer migration into dairy products in single serve portion packs. Possibilities and limitations of migration modeling. Index. Appendices.