Leaching of elements from packaging material into canned foods marketed in India

Chemometric approach in environmental pollution analysis: A critical review

With the ever-increasing global population and industrialization, it has become a call of the hour to start taking care of the environment to balance the ecosystem. For this, effective monitoring and assessment are required, which involves collecting and measuring environmental details, temporal and spatial readings of environmental data, and parameters. However, assessment of the environment is very tedious as it includes monitoring target analytes, identifying their sources, and reporting, which invariably implies that detailed environmental monitoring would be an intricate and expensive process. The traditional protocols in environmental measures are often manual and time demanding, which makes it further difficult. Moreover, several changes also occur within the environment, which could be chemical, physical, or biological, and since these environmental impacts are often cumulative, it becomes difficult to measure an isolated system. Furthermore, the chances of skipping significant results and trends become high. Also, experimental data obtained from the environmental analysis are usually non-linear and multi-variant due to different associations among various contributing variables. Therefore, it is implied that accurate measurements and environment monitoring are not using traditional analytical protocols. Thus, the need for a chemometric approach in environmental pollution analysis becomes paramount due to the inherent limitations associated with the conventional approach of analyzing environmental datasets. Chemometrics has appeared as a potential technique, which enhances the particulars of the chemical datasets by using statistical and mathematical analysis methods to analyze chemical data beyond univariate analysis. Utilizing chemometrics to study the environmental data is a revolutionary idea as it helps identify the relationship between sources of contaminations, environmental drivers, and their impact on the environment. Hence, this review critically explores the concept of chemometrics and its application in environmental pollution analysis by briefly highlighting the idea of chemometrics, its types, applications, advantages, and limitations in the environmental domain. An attempt is also made to present future trends in applications of chemometrics in environmental pollution analysis.

Rapid direct determination of tin in beverages using energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence

This article presents a new method for the simpler and faster determination of tin in beverages using EDXRF. Absorption coefficients for aqueous calibration samples were calculated and shown to be nearly identical to those of the beverage samples, thus permitting the use of aqueous standard solutions for external calibration. Beverage samples could then be measured directly using the external calibration. Determination of tin using this method takes 4 min. The LOD and LOQ were 4 mg L^-1 and 15 mg L^-1 respectively, and the precision was 3.89%. Different canned beverages (cold coffee, various fruit juices) were measured and the results compared to the concentrations obtained using ICP-OES after digestion. The two methods showed good compatibility, thus establishing the newly developed method as a rapid, simple, and accurate method for the determination of tin in beverages.

Chemometric Assessment and Best-Fit Function Modelling of the Toxic Potential of Selected Food Packaging Extracts

Food packaging materials constitute an ever more threatening environmental pollutant. This study examined options to specifically assess the ecotoxicity of packaged wastes, such as cans, subjected to various experimental treatments (in terms of extraction media, time of exposure, and temperature) that imitate several basic conditions of the process of food production. The extracts were studied for their ecotoxicity with bioluminescent Vibrio fischeri bacteria. The first objective of this study was to find patterns of similarity between different experimental conditions; we used multivariate statistical methods, such as hierarchical cluster analysis, to interpret the impact of experimental conditions on the ecotoxicity signals of the package extracts. Our second objective was to apply best-fit function modelling for additional data interpretation, taking into account, that ecotoxicity for various temperature conditions is time- and temperature dependent. We mathematically confirmed that chemometric data treatment allows for better understanding how different experimental conditions imitating the real use of food packaging. We also demonstrate that the level of ecotoxicity depends on different extraction media, time of exposure, and temperature regime.

Mineral Composition and Nutritive Value of Isotonic and Energy Drinks

Several very popular brands of isotonic and energy drinks consumed for fluid and electrolyte supplementation and stimulation of mental or physical alertness were chosen for investigation. Liquid beverages available in polyethylene bottles and aluminum cans as well as products in the form of tablets and powder in sachets were studied. The total concentrations of 21 elements (Ag, Al, B, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Ni, P, Pb, Sr, Ti, V, and Zn), both essential and toxic, were simultaneously determined in preconcentrated drink samples by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) equipped with pneumatic and ultrasonic nebulizers. Differences between the mineral compositions of isotonic and energy drinks were evaluated and discussed. The highest content of Na was found in both isotonic and energy drinks, whereas quite high concentrations of Mg were found in isotonic drinks, and the highest amount of calcium was quantified in energy drinks. The concentrations of B, Co, Cu, Ni, and P were higher in isotonic drinks, but energy drinks contained greater quantities of Ag, Cr, Zn, Mn, and Mo and toxic elements, as Cd and Pb. A comparison of element contents with micronutrient intake and tolerable levels was performed to evaluate contribution of the investigated beverages to the daily diet. The consumption of 250 cm(3) of an isotonic drink provides from 0.32% (for Mn) up to 14.8% (for Na) of the recommended daily intake. For the energy drinks, the maximum recommended daily intake fulfillment ranged from 0.02% (for V) to 19.4 or 19.8% (for Mg and Na).