Heavy Metals in Packagings

2. Procedure

2.1 Purchase

The packagings were purchased in the City of Copenhagen on 1 December, 1999 by Birgitte Kjær, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, and Ivan Christensen, Danish Technological Institute, Aarhus.

Fifty packagings in the form of wine bottles at a price of DKK 17-100 were purchased.

Two wines were bottled in Denmark whereas the rest of the wines were imported on bottles. Wine bottles imported from Argentina, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Hungary were purchased.

Place of purchase, country of origin and mark of the 50 samples appear from enclosures I and II.

2.2 Analyses

The analyses for the content of the heavy metals chromium, lead, cadmium and mercury were carried out as described in project 349. The wine bottles were crushed. After crushing of the glass, a pellet was pressed of the glass powder and analysed by X-ray technique (Philips PW2400/UNIQUANT, ver. 4.14).