3.3. Gasket composition (GC/MS)
Commercial gaskets could not be tested by colour measure- ments and FTIR analyses because of their irregular shape and thickness. Therefore, gasket composition was determined by GC/ MS analysis with previous Soxhlet extraction. The increased use of ESBO as an alternative to phthalates in food packaging materials, particularly in gaskets of lids from glass jars, was already reported [5e9]. This behaviour was confirmed in this study since ESBO was found in all gaskets in different amounts ranging from 0.2 to 14.1 wt % (Fig. 3). Furthermore, some other plasticizers such as ATBC, DOA and DBS also appeared in some cases. On the other hand, it could be noticed that plasticizer amounts were detected at a lower level than expected and than appeared in the literature [8,16e18]. In this