Migration study of optical brighteners from polymer packing materials to jam squeeze and fruit drink by...

Optical brighteners are commonly used to modify the appearance and to improve polymer properties of packaging. They are not chemically bound to polymers and able to migrate from packaging into the foods. These migrants are potentially harmful to human health. In concern with human safety an approach was made to analyze three optical brighteners such as diphenylbutadiene, Uvitex-OB, benzophenone in commercial fruit juice and jam. The migration level of these optical brighteners from low density poly ethylene packaging into fruit juice and jam was studied. Two optimized and validated analytical techniques such as spectrofluorimetry and high performance liquid chromatography with photo diode array detector used for migration study. Both methods have shown high correlation coefficients (>0.999), over a concentration range of 0.1-3.2 μg/mL, 0.1-1 μg/mL, 0.05-3.2 μg/mL for diphenylbutadiene, Uvitex-OB and benzophenone respectively. The preliminary studies confirm that the low density poly ethylene layer taken for study contained of diphenylbutadiene and the other two were absent. The migration level of diphenylbutadiene was studied at room temperature and different elevated temperature from 30 °C to 60 °C for up to 3 weeks. At room temperature no migration of diphenylbutadiene was observed where as at higher temperature migration could be observed. The maximum quantity of diphenylbutadiene migrated was found to be 0.0462 mg/kg from tetrapak, and 0.0382 mg/kg from jam squeeze after 3 weeks treatment at 60 °C. The migration of diphenylbutadiene was found to be less than allowable concentration during the study period.