Stahl et al. 2017 - aluminum food-contact study Part I

Stahl and colleagues summarize aluminum exposure sources and present the study design for a three-part investigation of aluminum migration from food contact materials into foods. Part I does not report the bottle, moka-pot, grill-pan, or camping-cookware migration results; those are reserved for Parts II and III. It does, however, include Hessian State Laboratory foodstuff aluminum data expanded beyond a 2011 publication, making this paper occurrence context for aluminum in broad food categories and food-contact-material investigations.

Key numbers

Table 3 reports aluminum in foodstuffs as mg/kg or mg/L, with product-specific sample counts, minimum, maximum, arithmetic mean, and median. The table is described as modified from Stahl 2011 and expanded with later Hessian State Laboratory results. No unit conversion is applied.

The highest maximum in Table 3 is 737 mg/kg or mg/L for baking mixes, followed by 537 mg/kg or mg/L for fine pastries in aluminum trays, 312 mg/kg or mg/L for cocoa powder, 218 mg/kg or mg/L for salt pretzels and similar savory biscuits, 184 mg/kg or mg/L for confectioneries, and 150 mg/kg or mg/L for chocolate. The highest mean is 165 mg/kg or mg/L for cocoa powder, followed by 51 for baking mixes, 48 for chocolate, and 40 for herbal-teas.

For the separate food-contact-material migration study design, Part I states that 297 samples were analyzed, including food with and without contact to aluminum-based cans, bottles, pans, or pots. Tap water background aluminum was 0.7 microgram/L, described as negligible compared with the lowest post-migration concentration of 10 microgram/L; the background value was subtracted from all tap-water-prepared samples.

Methods (brief)

The Part I occurrence table reports Hessian State Laboratory aluminum results for foodstuffs and states that some of those values had been published in 2011, with later results added here. For the food-contact-material migration study design, food and simulant samples were stored or prepared in aluminum-containing contact materials, homogenized where needed, digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and diluted to 25 mL. Aluminum was measured by ICP-MS according to DIN EN ISO 17294-2:2005-02 and by ICP-OES according to DIN ISO EN 11885:2009-09. Quality control used standard reference materials for water, rice flour, and apple leaves; internal recovery requirements for aluminum were 90 to 110%. The paper states that migration results themselves are presented in Part II for drinking bottles and moka pots and Part III for camping dishes and utensils.

Implications

This source supports aluminum occurrence context across food categories and identifies aluminum food-contact materials as a migration-test domain. The Table 3 foodstuff values can inform broad category evidence, while the Part I contact-material details should be treated as study-design context until paired with the Part II and Part III migration-result papers.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• food-packaging-foils-wraps
• food-packaging-cans-lids
• cookware-metal-alloy
• bakeware
• utensils-metal
• bread-and-baked-goods
• chocolate
• coffee
• tea
• seafood
• processed-meats
• fruit-juice-not-canned
• mineral-water
• mixed-meals-non-rice
• snacks-crackers-biscuits
• pasta-wheat-based
• dried-fruit
• nuts-seeds-other
• category-5-beverages
• aluminum

Verification notes

• Identity checks on 2026-06-09 found no existing source page for DOI 10.1186/s12302-017-0116-y, raw handle MFK_stahl2017, or cite key stahl2017-aluminum-food-contact-part1.
• Table 3 values were re-checked against /tmp/hmi-june9-123.txt extracted with pdftotext -layout. Product names, sample counts, <BG, and min/max/mean/median values are copied exactly, including the source’s printed mineral-water row where the minimum appears greater than the maximum.
• Units are preserved as mg/kg or mg/L, the source table’s combined food/liquid basis. No normalization to ppb was performed.
• Speciation check: the source reports aluminum only; there is no arsenic, mercury, or chromium speciation issue.
• Part I regulatory values such as the TWI and specific release limit are source context only and are not HMTc thresholds.
• Brand firewall check: no commercial food or cookware brands are attached to contamination values. Instrument and reference-material names are method context only.
• Closed vocabulary check: product, ingredient, metal, and wiki-page slugs use entries present in docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md. Exact categories such as pine nuts, spelt, Harz cheese, malt, wine, game meat, herring, and crustaceans are retained in table text where exact product slugs are absent or not used in the broad frontmatter.

Page history

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