Pharmacopeial Forum 41(1) publishes a new article on pharmaceutical packaging

WVTR can be measured by the weight gain of a desiccant or by the weight loss of water in a packaging system in an environment with constant temperature and relative humidity (RH). Packaging materials to be tested, which are filled with water, show a constant vapour pressure difference along the walls of the containers. This constitutes an improvement in comparison to the current WVTR testing according to <671>, in which the containers are filled with desiccant and where the vapour pressure inside neither starts nor remains at 0% rel. humidity.
When containers are filled with water, many of the challenges can be avoided occurring with the use of desiccants and with the handling of containers which must be filled with desiccants - which is another advantage of the new method.