Sanitaion Status of Bottled and Mineral Water Packaging : A Survey

MEI-HWEI CHANG, SHAW-JWU LIN, LIU-CHING SU AND CHIN-CHEN CHENG

National Laboratories of Foods and Drugs, Departmrnt of Health, Executive Yuan
161-2, Kuen Yang Street, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

ABSTRACT

   To investigate the sanitary status and safety of bottled and mineral water packaging, from July 1991 to June 1992 a total of 97 samples were examined. These included 30 polyvinyl chloride (PVC), 22 polyethylene (PE), 1 polypropylene (PP), 17 polyethylene terephthalate (PP) and 27 polycarbonate (PC) containers. In this study a simple and efficient infrared (IR) spectrophotometric method was used to analyze these various types of plastic products. The results showed that 13 PVC samples out of 30(43.3%) failed to meet the R.O.C. Hygienic Standard for Food Containers. Among those 13 PVC samples, 9 contained 152. 6-21015.3 ppm dibutyltin compounds, 7 had 1.4-45.3 ppm vinylchloroide monomer, while 3 contained failed to meet Hygienic levels of both dibu-tyltin compounds and vinylchloride monomer. Plastic containers made of other materials were all found to comply with the Standard.

Key Words : Infrared spectrophotometry, Vinylchloride monomer, Dibutyltin compound, Safety of food containers