My thesis was geared towards understanding the migration of a suite of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) from commercially available plastic containers. The literature is replete with examples of chemicals that can migrate of from plastics (e.g., bisphenol-A, flame retardants) but to my knowledge a comprehensive study on PAC migration from different plastic types has not been reported. This is surprising considering that most of the plastics in commerce are derived from crude-oil and PACs are known to be one of the main contaminants in crude-oil. Furthermore, many PACs are known to cause negative health outcomes in wildlife. To understand PAC migration from plastics, I took four plastic-types and incubated them separately at 40oC with dichloromethane and olive-oil. At prescribed time-points I sampled the incubation media and measured PACs using gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. I was able to detect several polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their alkylated derivatives. I also was able to report the rate of migration of four PAHs from high-density polyethylene. My work is important because in addition to reporting the migration of many PACs from plastics for the first time, it also provides evidence for a poorly studied route of human exposure to these compounds and further impetus for investigation into biopolymers and other renewable plastic derivatives.