Epoxidized soy bean oil (ESBO) migrating from the gaskets of lids into food packed in glass jars

Epoxidized soy bean oil (ESBO) was determined in foods packed in glass jars closed by lids with a poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) gasket. The methyl ester of a diepoxy linoleic acid isomer was measured, using transesterification directly in the homogenized food and on-line HPLC-GC-FID analysis. Infant foods from the Swiss market consisting of vegetables, potato and rice or muesli with fruits and berries contained less than 7 mg/kg ESBO, but meat (its fat?) strongly increased ESBO migration up to 86 mg/kg. Some 12% of the products exceeded 15 mg/kg. Austrian and Norwegian samples gave similar results. Edible oil strongly extracts the ESBO from the gasket in food contact within a few weeks. Since this part of the gasket on average contained 91 mg ESBO, the legal limit is likely to be far exceeded whenever the food contains free oil contacting the gasket, such as oily sauces or vegetables and fish in oil. In fact, the mean ESBO concentration in 86 samples was 166 mg/kg, with a maximum of 580 mg/kg.