Migration study of organotin compounds from food packaging by surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Overview

Mandrile and colleagues evaluated surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for detecting dibutyltin maleate (DTM) and tributyltin chloride (TBT) migrating from intentionally spiked PVC cling film into 3% acetic-acid food simulant. The study is useful food-contact leachate context, but it is not a market-occurrence survey because the PVC films were experimentally additivated. Organotin values are reported as compound-specific DTM/TBT or as tin equivalents and should not be collapsed into total tin or inorganic tin.

Key numbers

• Source identity: Talanta 220 (2020) article 121408; DOI 10.1016/j.talanta.2020.121408; local readable PDF has 20 pages.
• Food-contact matrix: an industrial food-grade PVC cling film described as 10 mm thickness in the extracted text was dissolved and re-cast after spiking with TBT, DTM, or both compounds.
• Regulatory context stated by the authors: for organotin compounds, the specific migration limit was 0.05 mg of tin per kg of food; the paper gives corresponding legal limits of 0.15 mg/l for DTM and 0.14 mg/l for TBT.
• Migration test setup: 5 cm2 film portions, 8.33 ml of 3% acetic-acid food simulant, proportional relationship 1 dm3 simulant per 6 dm2 packaging, 10 days at 40 ºC.
• SERS calibration: DTM dynamic range 0-1 mg/l with reduced χ2 = 0.8; TBT dynamic range 0.5-5 mg/l with reduced χ2 =0.2.
• SERS detection limits as described in different parts of the paper: abstract says DTM and TBT were detected down to 0.01 mg/l and 0.08 mg/l; the Results section reports TBT LOD 0.10 mg/l and LOQ 1.53 mg/l; the conclusion says TBT down to 0.1 mg/l.
• ICP-MS calibration in 3% acetic acid: DTM R2 0.99, LOD 0.005 mg/l, LOQ 0.007 mg/l; TBT R2 = 0.99, LOD 0.027 mg/l, LOQ 0.092 mg/l.
• UV-Vis DTM calibration: linear dynamic range 0.1 to 2.0 mg/l, reduced χ2 = 1.4, LOD 0.08 mg/l, and LOQ 0.13 mg/l.
• Authors’ overall comparison: the organotin migration limit was exceeded for all tested spiked-PVC cases except PVC spiked with low-concentration DTM.

Spiked PVC-film loadings

Table 1 reports the following added organotin and corresponding tin loadings; the paper states uncertainty for all values is 0.1 mg/g.

Migration results as compound concentrations

The Results prose reports SERS and UV-Vis compound concentrations in mg/l food simulant:

Table 2 migration results as tin equivalents

Table 2 reports mg(Sn)/kg (simulant) by method:

Methods (brief)

The authors prepared spiked PVC films from dissolved PVC cling film and TBT/DTM stock solutions, then performed migration tests into 3% acetic acid under EU food-contact-material simulant conditions. Simulants were analyzed by direct-in-liquid SERS using 30 nm silver nanoparticles, by ICP-MS for tin, and by UV-Vis for DTM. ICP-MS used five tin isotopes (116Sn, 117Sn, 118Sn, 119Sn, 120Sn) with gallium isotopes as internal standards; high-concentration migration samples were diluted at 1:40.

Implications

Certification (HMTc): This paper should be used as food-contact organotin leachate context only. The measurements come from intentionally spiked PVC films and should not be pooled as representative market packaging occurrence, and the TBT/DTM values should remain organotin-specific rather than being converted into total or inorganic tin evidence.

Courses: The source is useful for showing how migration-test design, speciation, and method selectivity interact: SERS can distinguish TBT from DTM, while ICP-MS quantifies tin but cannot by itself distinguish which organotin species produced the signal.

App: If flexible food-packaging organotin context is surfaced, this source can support a method-context warning that PVC food-contact films can release organotin stabilizers under acidic simulant conditions, with the caveat that the tested films were deliberately spiked.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Flexible pouches/films
• Tin
• Organotins

Verification notes

• The readable sibling PDF was extracted with pdftotext -layout to /tmp/ingest_alt.txt; abstract, introduction, Materials and method, Table 1, Results, Table 2, Discussion, and Conclusions were checked against this page.
• Identity checks before creation: DOI 10.1016/j.talanta.2020.121408, exact title phrase, author surname Mandrile, raw SHA-256 cbe37097d9dfadf1d101bec9c7f1368a5889a8f65b7da78774eeb54ec019c1b8, raw handle MFK_migration-study-of-organotin-compounds-from-food-p, and cite key mandrile2020-organotin-food-packaging-sers were searched in wiki/sources/ and evidence files; only intake/tracker CSV rows were found.
• A corrupt sibling file, raw/Manual Fetch Kimi /June 8/Kimi_Agent_Download Corruption Issue/_extracted_may31_cat23_food_contact/cat23_food_contact/Migration Study of Organotin Compounds from Food Packaging.pdf, has SHA-256 932618e8a420c4204fc21ac9e6c058bc255f1b382c361995b6c1a0a3c9f2fd0a; pdftotext and pdfinfo fail with invalid xref/page-tree errors. The readable _2 PDF is used as the canonical raw file for this source.
• Units are preserved as printed: mg/l, mg/kg, mg(Sn)/kg (simulant), mg/g, cm2, ml, dm3, dm2, and ºC. No conversion to ppb or µg/kg was performed.
• Speciation check: the source measures organotin species DTM and TBT and tin-equivalent Sn by ICP-MS. This page does not treat organotins as total tin or inorganic tin.
• The 3,91 ± 0.78 SERS value for PVC + TBT h.c. is copied with the source table’s comma decimal mark.
• The page records the source’s regulatory migration-limit comparison as context only and does not propose any HMTc threshold.
• Closed-vocabulary check: product routing uses the broad flexible food-packaging films row. No PVC-cling-film product or organotin ingredient slug was invented.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.