Screening Food Packaging for PFAS

Written by Heather W.

A well-documented use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is in food packaging to provide water and oil-repellency. Previous studies to measure the occurrence of PFAS in food packaging have utilized PIGE to provide a rapid measurement technique for total fluorine, combined with targeted analysis LC-MS/MS and GC-MS techniques to measure specific PFAS compounds. Screening for PFAS in food packaging can be completed using PIGE to measure both polymeric and non-polymeric compounds, including those not routinely measured using targeted analysis techniques. The combination of rapid total-fluorine screening with validation through targeted analysis techniques allows us to measure for PFAS in a variety of samples.

Additional projects to measure the use of PFAS in food packaging are ongoing and include collaborations with researchers at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, and Green Science Policy Institute.

Publications

Schwartz-Narbonne, H., Yang^,D., Shalin, A., Blum, A., Bruton, T., Peaslee, G.F., Venier, M., Wang, Z., Whitehead^,H.D., Wu, Y., Diamond, M., Peng, H.;Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Canadian Plant Fibre Based Food Contact Materials. Manuscript in preparation

Laurel A. Schaider, Simona A. Balan, Arlene Blum, David Q. Andrews, Mark J. Strynar, Margaret E. Dickinson, David M. Lunderberg, Johnsie R. Lang, and Graham F. Peaslee Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2017 4 (3), 105-111 DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00435

Lara Schultes, Graham F. Peaslee, John D. Brockman, Ashabari Majumdar, Sean R. McGuinness, John T. Wilkinson, Oskar Sandblom, Ruth A. Ngwenyama, and Jonathan P. Benskin Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2019 6 (2), 73-78 DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.8b00700