In short
Particulate materials are used in a wide range of food-based applications: as food/feed additives, food ingredients, novel foods, pesticides, and in food contact materials. Despite high interest for the food and feed sectors (anticaking agent, opacifier, pigment…), civil society and public authorities expressed some concerns in recent years about consumer exposure to the nano-objects present in these different substances. Both manufacturers and the EU Member State (MS) control laboratories need to be able to characterise the number-based size distribution of the particles contained in these substances, once they are already incorporated in food products. The CEN/TS (WI 00352044) project will provide a technical specification (TS) to extract and measure particles from food matrices.
Project description
In the context of CEN/TC 352, a technical specification is being developed for the characterisation of nanomaterials and/or materials that may contain of articles at the nanoscale in food products . This will lead to a harmonised approach to determine in reliable and comparable way the number-based size distribution of the constituent (nano)particles contained in different substances already incorporated in a selection of market-representative food matrices.
The different materials within the scope are:
- ‘engineered nanomaterials’ as defined in the Novel Food Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 with labelling requirements set out in the Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the provision of food information to consumers (also called INCO),
- ‘nanomaterials’ as defined by the Commission Recommendation definition of nanomaterials (2022/C 229/01)
- as well as conventional materials which do not ‘fit’ any nanomaterial definitions but may contain particles at the nanoscale.
Sciensano develops guidelines and protocols (SOPs) for extracting metallic/metal oxide particles from food matrices and analysing them by Electron Microscopy (EM-EDX). These results will be complemented by analyses performed by other project partners focusing on ICP-MS in Single Particle mode (sp ICP-MS).The different SOPs will be validated through several inter-laboratory studies on representative samples of the substances of interest and various food matrices. This enables a better implementation of regulatory requirements for food products
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