Screening adulteration of polypropylene bottles with postconsumer recycled plastics for oral drug package by near-infrared spectroscopy

Adulteration of pharmaceutical packaging containers with postconsumer recycled plastic materials was considerably difficult to identify due to the similar chemical compositions of virgin and recycled plastics. In the present study, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy coupled with conformity test was proposed to screen the adulteration of pharmaceutical packaging containers. Two kinds of representative screening models were investigated on polypropylene (PP) bottles for oral drug package. The reliability of the screening models was validated through studying the identification reliability, specificity, and robustness of the methods. The minimum spiking level of two modeled adulterants at the proportion of 20% could be detected, and the unqualified sample from a domestic manufacturer was rejected by this developed method. This strategy represents a rapid and promising analytical method for screening the adulteration of pharmaceutical plastic packaging containers with postconsumer recycled plastics.

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► NIR was used for screening the adulteration of plastic packaging containers with postconsumer recycled plastics.
► NIR models were validated by studying the identification reliability, specificity, and robustness.
► NIR models screened the adulterated samples in the spiking level of 20% successfully.
► The universal NIR model rejected an unqualified PP bottle adulterated with recycle plastics in practice.