Abstract

Today PFAS are still widely used in disposable food packaging and tableware worldwide, but the market is changing quickly. In Denmark, the use of PFAS in paper and board food packaging has been banned since July 2020. The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration has set an indicator value of 20 mg/kg to assess whether PFAS are intentionally added to paper and board or not. This indicator value is determined by the TOF (Total Organic Fluorine) method, which is considered as an accepted proxy for the total PFAS content.

However, this method does not take in consideration non-extractable levels of inorganic fluorine embedded in the crystal structure of minerals used as fillers or pigments. This could lead to potential false positive contributions, which is alarming to customers and/or consumers. We present our data and results on an internal study which reveals the unique information that fluorine solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (19F ssNMR) spectroscopy provides in the analysis of PFAS compounds. 19F ssNMR can differentiate between PFAS, non-PFAS and F- ions, eliminating the need for sample clean-up, even for complex samples like coated paper and board food packaging.

With these results, we want to illustrate that Solenis Barrier Coatings do not contain any PFAS, but that our products are specifically designed to replace them while meeting specific end-use performance and regulatory requirements.