Development of a modified chemical inertness test method for refillable pet bottle material

Abstract.

Refillable PET containers offer great advantages from an ecological point of view, i.e., to reduce waste from packaging materials. A major concern is the potential public health risks of PET refillable bottles due to possible misuse. In this study, a modified method for determining the chemical inertness of PET bottles involving the interaction of strips from bottle walls with a selection of model contaminants was investigated. A further object was to establish temporally shorter contamination conditions for PET strips, yielding comparable contamination levels as the 14 days/40 °C exposure conditions applied so far. Results showed that substantially shorter exposure times (2–3 days) at higher temperature (60 °C) can be applied to make the overall chemical inertness test procedure as simple and quick as possible.