antimony assessment in pet bottles for soft drink

The aim of this work was to develop a method for the determination of antimony (sb) in polyethylene terephthalate (pet) bottles and to evaluate its migration into soft drink and simulant. in this context, a new procedure for pet sample preparation, using a high pressure asher (hpa), is presented for the determination of sb by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (icp-oes). the concentration of sb in pet bottles ranged between 272 and 650 mg kg−1. the migration of sb into soft drink after 180 days at 35 °c was below the loq, 20 μg l−1. the specific migration of sb from the bottle into simulant 3% of acetic acid after the contact per 10 days at 40 °c was less than the loq, 23.5 μg l−1. the results showed that all packaging evaluated contained sb, but the maximum permissible migration value for sb, 40 μg l−1, established by anvisa and eu, was never exceeded.