On August 14, according to CCTV news, in South Korea, the market share of instant noodle company Nongshim Group exceeded 50%. Last week, the EU food safety agency in Nongshim Group exported to Germany in January and March this year, detected the first-class carcinogen ethylene oxide up to 148 times the EU standard value, the agency has issued a notice to various European countries, asking to stop selling and recall related products, on the same day, the topic #Nongshim instant noodles detected carcinogen # on Weibo hot search list.
The above content comes from: Sina Finance
Meanwhile, on July 29, Froneri's official website released a recall statement that at least 46 ice creams under the Nestlé, Milka, Toblerone, Nuii, Oreo, Princesa, La Lechera and Smarties brands produced by Froneri were recalled due to the presence of ethylene oxide, which may cause cancer.
In the EU RASFF food and feed safety alerts, the notification about ethylene oxide detection, from September 2020 to August 13, 2021, a total of 606 cases, of which 259 cases in 2021, and only in August 2021 less than half a month, there were 29 notifications about ethylene oxide exceeding the standard, the following figure is a screenshot of the EU official website, the details can be learned through the following website, https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/screen/list 。
It can be seen from the EU's notifications that the products involved in these notifications include: ice cream, moringa leaf powder, food additives (such as locust bean gum, calcium carbonate), phenylpropylene extract, etc. In the 29 notifications that have occurred in August 2021, 11 cases of ice cream detected ethylene oxide exceeding the standard, accounting for 37.93%.
According to people in the domestic ice cream industry, ethylene oxide will not be used as a raw material or industrial auxiliary in the ice cream production process. Ethylene oxide appears in ice cream most likely from packaging printing inks, and it is also possible that raw materials are brought in.
According to the data, ethylene oxide is an organic compound, the chemical formula is C2H4O, is a toxic carcinogen, on October 27, 2017, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer published a preliminary list of carcinogens reference, ethylene oxide in a class of carcinogens list. Ethylene oxide has a bactericidal effect, does not corrode the metal, has no residual odor, can kill bacteria (and its internal spores), mold and fungi, so it can be used to disinfect some items and materials that cannot withstand high temperature disinfection, and is also widely used to disinfect medical supplies such as bandages, sutures and surgical instruments.
It is mainly used in the manufacture of various other solvents (such as fibrinolytic agents, etc.), diluents, non-ionic surfactants, synthetic detergents, antifreeze agents, disinfectants, tougheners and plasticizers. Hydroxyethylation with cellulose can be synthesized to obtain water-soluble resins (its ethylene oxide content is about 75%). It can also be used as fumigator, paint thickener, emulsifier, adhesive and paper sizing agent.
In GB 38507-2020 "Limits of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Content in Inks", solvent inks use organic volatile solvents as the main diluent, of which the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) limits for gravure inks, flexo printing inks and screen printing inks are ≤75%, and the limit for inkjet printing inks is ≤95%; moreover, the list of prohibited solvents in the standard does not include ethylene oxide.
The ink is only selected to make the emulsifying or wetting effect of the surfactant, and the selection can be determined according to the equilibrium value of its hydrophilic group and the lipophilic group (that is, H.L.B.). Ink is generally a water-in-oil emulsion, because of its good printing adaptability, storage stability time is longer, so H.L.B. is generally selected as an emulsifier of 4 to 6. Commonly used varieties are Spyridine (sorbitol and various fatty acid synthesis esters) and Tween (spumpane and ethylene oxide additions) and so on. At the same time, the traditional reactive diluents used in UV inks, such as styrene, first-generation acrylate monomers, etc., are very toxic, and some acrylate monomers have a strong irritating effect on the skin. In order to reduce the irritation of active diluents to the skin, there are usually two methods: one is to use ethylene oxide, propylene oxide and hexagonal ring-opening polymerization to increase the molecular weight of the monomer; the other is to change the structure of the monomer ester group; and the other is to change the previous use of alcohol esterification methods. The use of alcohol addition to the acryloyl group, so that the polyfunction of monomer skin irritation is greatly reduced, such as neopentyl glycol diacrylate esterification synthesis, THE VALUE (skin irritation index) is 4.96, and when the addition method is used, the PH value is reduced to 0.3. This also leads to the possibility that the ethylene oxide contained in the ink may be mixed into the product.
Although it is not possible to determine whether the real cause of such a large number of ethylene oxide exceeding the standard is due to the large ink printed in the packaging, in order to ensure food safety and control risks, the use of ink for packaging materials can be considered into our risk assessment.