EU Draws a New Red Line for Food-Packaging Inks: Benzophenone and 4-Methylbenzophenone Migration Must Stay Below 0.6 mg/kg
New rules issued by the European Union's Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health now require any food packaging printed with inks containing 4-methylbenzophenone or benzophenone to comply with a mass migration limit: the combined migration of these two substances out of the ink materials and into food must stay below 0.6 mg per kilogram. Printing inks are consumed in enormous volumes across food packaging, yet they frequently carry toxic and hazardous chemistries such as heavy metals, residual solvents, volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can contaminate the packed food through chemical migration. Benzene-type residues pose the gravest risk to human health and can readily cause diseases such as cancer. With this rulemaking, the EU has placed printing inks squarely among the materials and articles subject to specific regulatory control.
Squeezed by both tightening EU regulation and the financial crisis, exporters must vet packaging material suppliers rigorously, favouring substrates and systems that are low-risk, highly safe and environmentally sound, and must understand the production process behind them: after printing, solvents in the ink have to be fully volatilised and the ink completely cured in line with the relevant industry standards. Before packaging bags go into use, companies may also submit the materials to suitably qualified laboratories at inspection and quarantine institutions for conformity verification, so that customs clearance of their goods is not held up.
— This article is republished from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362294.html
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