Study of the migration of chemicals from conventional food contact materials into food and environment: hurdles and limits for a whole hazard identification and risk assessment

Food contact materials (FCMs) are all materials and articles intended to encounter food, such as packaging and containers, kitchen equipment, cutlery and dishes. In this review, the main FCMs and their principal migrants were analysed by a critical analysis of the data available in literature. Nowadays, results about chemical migration from food containers into food and/or environment are still rather inconsistent, with values often scattered over a wide concentration range, probably because of the variety of exposure conditions experimentally employed. Thus, it is difficult to draw realistic conclusions about the risk characterization, and then to evaluate the migration health hazards for consumers. In this context, authors try to highlight the main hurdles and limits for a whole hazard identification and risk assessment about migration from FCMs to food and/or environment. They also indicate some possible strategies to be adopted to improve the quality of data collection and experimental design optimization.