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ABSTRACT
In recent years, it has been shown that food contact materials can be a potential source of microplastics (MP). Recently, it was reported that more than 16 million polypropylene (PP) particles L−1 may be released from infant feeding bottles (IFBs) made of PP. In the present study seven different IFBs were investigated by the same method used in the aforementioned publication. In our tests, however, only one IFB showed a level of MP above the limit of detection. More importantly, the MP detected were not of the same material as the bottle and are more likely the result of contamination. In addition, there was a notable difference in released MP particles when the water simulant was filtered for µ-Raman spectroscopy at hot temperature (70°C) instead of filtering it after cooling down to room temperature. Thermal desorption gas chromatography mass spectrometry showed that these differences may be the result of migration and precipitation of additives such as fatty acid esters, often used as release agents in bottle production. These observations, that migrating additives could result in false positive errors for MP, indicate the need for critical consideration when polymers have been subjected to heat.
Acknowledgments
We thank Kerstin Spriewald for performing the TDS-GC/MS measurements.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
All data from this study are included in this article or in the supplementary information. Raw data can be provided by the corresponding author on request.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.