The aim of this work was to develop and validate an analytical method to determine ε-caprolactam in 3% acetic acid solution and to study its migration from polyamide 6 into food simulant. Gas chromatography was used with ε-caprolactam as an analytical standard and 2-azacyclononanone as an internal standard. The linearity was obtained by the concentration range of 1.60 to 640.00 µg.mL-1, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9999. Detection and quantification limits of the method were 0.24 ng and 1.60 ng, respectively. Relative standard deviations obtained for method precision were less than 4.3%, while method accuracy showed recovery between 100 and 106%. The method was able to quantify ε-caprolactam in the simulant, showing a wide linearity, good precision and accuracy. For the migration assay, polyamide 6 films were placed in glass vials containing 10 mL of simulant, which were hermetically capped and exposed at 40 °C for 10 days (total immersion). The amount of ε-caprolactam that migrated from packaging into the simulant varied from 7.8 to 10.5 and 6.9 to 7.6 mg.Kg-1, for films used as meat products and cheese packaging, respectively.
migration; ε-caprolactam; polyamide 6; food simulant; validation of analytical method; gas chromatography
