Deciphering the complexity of the chemicals in food packaging materials using molecular networks

• Published in: Food chemistry 2025-01, Vol.462, p.140853, Article 140853
• Main Authors: Omer, Elsa, Bakiri, Ali, Hammel, Yves-Alexis, Sanders, Matthew J., Koster, Sander, Ciclet, Olivier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bioplastics; Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; Food contact material; Food Contamination - analysis; Food Packaging - instrumentation; Mass Spectrometry; Molecular networking; Non-intentionally added substance; Non-targeted analysis; Oligomers
• ISSN: 0308-8146; 1873-7072; 1873-7072
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.140853

Chemicals from packaging materials might be transferred into food resulting in consumer exposure. Identifying these migrated chemicals is highly challenging and crucial to perform their safety assessment, usually starting by the understanding of the chemical composition of the packaging material itself. This study explores the use of the Molecular Networking (MN) approach to support identification of the extracted chemicals. Two formulations of bioplastics were analyzed using Liquid Chromatography hyphenated to High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry. Data processing and interpretation using a conventional manual method was performed as a point of comparison to understand the power of MN. Interestingly, only the MN approach facilitated the identification of unknown chemicals belonging to a novel oligomer series containing the azelaic acid monomer. The MN approach provided a faster visualization of chemical families in addition to the highlight of unrelated chemicals enabling to prioritize chemicals for further investigation improving the safety assessment of packaging materials. •Molecular Network approach promising to improve safety assessment of food packaging.•Molecular Network approach accelerates identification of chemicals such as oligomers.•Molecular Network visualization underscores nodes that may require further attention.•Unknown chemicals identified only via Molecular Network approach such as azealic oligomers.