Mineral oil contamination in cardboard

Many food samples are often contaminated with mineral oil coming from different sources. One possible source of contamination is the migration from cardboard packaging made of recycled fibres. Mineral oils are complex mixtures of hydrocarbons. Due to the high number of isomers present, it is not possible to separate individual hydrocarbons by GC and, for this reason, GC traces are characterized by "humps" of unresolved peaks. Nevertheless, mineral oil contamination can be classified as mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH), which are open chain paraffins, isoparaffins and cyclic naphthenes and mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH), comprising mainly alkylated 1-3 ring compounds.