In this study, more than 115 PFS were detected in industrial
blends and in addition synthesis by-products, such as
PFOS, PFOSA and triPAPS were present. The polyfluoroethoxylates
had the greatest number of homologues, which
had different numbers of repeat monomer units, CF2CF2 or
CH2CH2O that were chromatographically separated. A
number of the PFS studied are PFOS derivatives, which
are prohibited in Europe and North America, but which still
are commercially available from outside the EU. DiPAPS,
triPAPS and S-diPAPS were also detected in five of 14
samples migrates from paper and board food contact
materials, sampled in 2008. To our knowledge it is the
first time DiPAPS and S-diPAPS have been reported to
migrate from European food contact materials. This is of
environmental and human health concern as diPAPS can be
metabolised to PFCA. The PFS typically had fluorinated
chain lengths from C6 to C16, where in particular the longer
perfluorinated chains could be an issue, as they are more
bioaccumulative than the short chains (Guo et al. 2008).
The PFS which have been studied here are only a subset of
what currently is used in food contact materials (US FDA
2010a; BfR 2009). In addition, new products are being
introduced onto the market, based on polymeric and short
chain fluorochemistry. To get an overview of the sources of
fluorochemicals, it would be relevant to monitor for current
and emerging, but also for formerly used PFS, which might
be persistent. The presence of several fluorinated compounds
in the blends and in the migrates, show the mixture
of PFS that humans are being exposed to, and hence the
relevance of performing toxicity tests not only on single
PFS, but also of mixtures of PFS. In addition to discovering
emerging fluorinated compounds, this study also identified
a gap of knowledge and of specific EU legislation on PFS
in food contact materials, such as paper and board. At
present, there is an urgent lack of access to both old and
emerging industrial blends, and to analytical standards of
the many homologues of PFAS and their structural isomers.
Analytical standards are essential to achieve accurate
quantifications and thus exposure estimates of PFS in food,
humans and environmental matrices. Future work in our
group will focus on setting up quantitative methods, tied to
a basic understanding of how PFS bind to and are released