Short Description:
This session deals with mineral oil residues in food in relation to food safety and defense. Details about occurrence, contamination routes, analytical determination, and toxicology will be provided.
Description:
This session deals with mineral oil residues in food in relation to food safety and defense. Details about occurrence, contamination routes, analytical determination, and toxicology will be provided.
Mineral oil residues potentially imparted from food packaging have been studied for decades. The mineral oil fraction can be distinguished in two fractions. The first one consists mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) and the second one is called mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH). These fractions show different toxicological behavior. The MOSH fraction can accumulate in specific tissues in the human body, while the MOAH fraction can show genotoxic effects in the AMES test. Especially, higher condensed ring systems (3-7 rings) show the genotoxic effect. The FIT detected contaminations derived from batching oils in jute bag as long as 30 years ago. Another major source for contamination was identified from secondary fiber and printed packaging material.
Recently, special focus was put on the development of robust analytical methods which are based on the direct coupling of liquid chromatography to large volume gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (online LCGC-FID). Nevertheless, additional confirmation analysis based on comprehensive two dimensional gas chromatography with time of flight mass spectrometry is required (GCxGC-ToFMS). Furthermore, an additional sample preparation step was developed to separate the one and two ring aromatics from the three- and higher-ring systems. Several real world samples were analyzed by these methods in correlation with the AMES test to verify toxicological potential.
Research Promotion:
Pre-Tenured Faculty or Recent PhD Graduate