Safety of Nanomaterials in the Life Cycle of Food Packaging
Nanoscale materials offer many potential benefits in food packaging applications, including enhanced barrier properties, sensing, lightweighting, labeling and improved environmental performance. However, as novel materials, there is a high bar to acceptability, requiring safety demonstrations more challenging than for conventional packaging materials. Challenges are varied and include the current uncertainties about the risks from exposure to nanoscale materials as well as simple measurement issues. Further complexities relate to the lack of established methods for demonstrating nanomaterial safety in composites and unstudied nanomaterial transformations that could occur under environmental conditions associated with food handling. This talk will explore some of the driving toxicology and exposure concerns from a risk and regulatory perspective, and offer ideas about how to advance the demonstration of safety and gain market access for this exciting class of new technologies. Examples such as cellulose nanomaterials and nanosilver will be discussed as case studies.
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