Acceptable daily intake concept

Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) An estimate similar in concept to the RfD, but derived using a less strictly defined methodology. RfDs have replaced ADIs as the USEPA s (Agency) preferred values for use in evaluating potential noiicarcinogenic health effects resulting from exposure to a chemical. 

This method of calculation is based on the use of animal toxicity data to determine limits. As mentioned earlier, this method is particularly suited for determining limits for materials that are not used medically. This method is based upon the concepts of acceptable daily intake (ADI) and no observed effect level (NOEL) developed by scientists in the Environmental Protection Agency [7], the U.S. Army Medical Bioengineering Research and Development Laboratory [8], and the toxicology department at Abbott Laboratories [9], This method has also been recently used to calculate the limits of organic solvent residues allowed in APIs [10]. 

Bigwood (1973) credits the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization-World Health Organization Expert Committee on Eood Additives with developing the concept of acceptable daily intake (ADI) in the late 1950s. How... 

Truhaut, R. 1991. The concept of the acceptable daily intake An historical review. Food Addit. Contam. 8(2) 151-162. 

Health organizations throughout the world utilize a safe dose concept in the dose-response assessment of noncancer toxicity. This safe dose has often been referred to by different names, such as acceptable daily intake (ADI), tolerable daily intake (TDI) or tolerable concentration (TC), minimal risk level (MRL), reference dose (RfD), and reference concentration (RfC). The approaches used by various health organizations share many of the same underlying assumptions, judgments on critical effect, and choices of uncertainty (or safety) factors. 

In 1988, JMPR recommended that temporary acceptable daily intakes should not be allocated for new compounds and that an ADI should not be allocated in the absence of an adequate database (FAOAVHO, 1988). The monographs are published for all chemicals that are reviewed, regardless of whether an ADI is allocated. The data requirements are clearly specified for those chemicals with an inadequate database. The concept of the conditional acceptable daily intake, adopted by the 1969 JMPR, was limited to those compounds for which the use was at that time considered essential but for which the toxicological database was... 

After these introductory remarks, I shall attempt to give you an account of the current recommendations of the World Health Organization in this field. In particular, I will stress the "safe" levels of intake based on concepts such as Acceptable and Admissible Daily Intake (ADI), respectively, for intentional food additives and pesticide residues in food Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) for cumulative toxic metals figures for body burdens and the corresponding "safe" limits recommended for foodstuffs, including the relatively recent definition of irreducible limits to deal with the problem of trace contaminants in food. 

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