Contact with food: laws, physics, chemistry

online lecture by Bernhard Fritz on December 3, 2024, 3 p.m.

Moderation: Hans-Uwe von Grabowski

There is nothing that is more important to people than their own health. The effects of substances that we ingest intentionally or inadvertently were therefore investigated early on. Paracelsus' principle of the concentration dependence of toxins served as a guideline for all those who devoted themselves to toxicology for 500 years.

With increasingly better analytical methods in the second half of the 20th century, it was possible to detect ever smaller concentrations in (foreign) substances that enter the human body with food. This meant that the transfer of substances from food contact materials (or from the "environment" in general) into food became increasingly relevant and was reflected in legislation. Since the 1980s, the EU member states have gradually built up a legal framework that, based on scientific data, is still globally (!) groundbreaking for the assessment of food contact materials.

The lecture covers the legal framework (of the EU) for substances/materials/articles for food contact and the physical and chemical principles underlying it.