On June 30, 2020, the Food Packaging Forum will hold a webinar at 16:00 CEST featuring a presentation by Alan Bergmann from the Swiss Centre for Applied Ecotoxicology including their recent study investigating the use of bioassays to test food contact materials (FCMs). Understanding migration of chemicals from FCMs is important for assessing human health risks, but it is challenged by the presence of non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) that are often unknown and highly challenging to identify. Using an effect-directed analysis approach with high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC), chemical identification is focused on those substances that are of concern because they have certain hazard properties.
In the study, the endocrine disrupting hazard property of estrogenicity was assessed for 20 chemicals representative of migrants from plastic FCMs and three migrates of coated metal food cans. Using the novel planar yeast estrogen screen (P-YES), the team found this approach to be promising for analyzing complex mixtures of estrogenic chemicals that can migrate from FCMs with greater sensitivity than a standard method. Their current work extends to genotoxicity and identification of toxic chemicals with high resolution mass spectrometry.
Registration to join the webinar is free of charge and can be done on the event’s webpage.
Read more
Food Packaging Forum (June 2020). “Novel bioassays to improve FCM safety testing.”
Reference
Bergmann, A. et al. (May 26, 2020). “Estrogenic activity of food contact materials—evaluation of 20 chemicals using a yeast estrogen screen on HPTLC or 96-well plates.” Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry
