Estimating exposure to migrants from food contact articles

7 Estimating exposure to migrants from food contact articles 

Estimates of exposure need to be in units which are meaningful. Many toxicologists use mg/kg body weight/day to assess risk. The body weight can be that recorded in surveys or the EU assumption of 60 kg body weight per person. The use of t,g/person/day enables one to determine if a threshold has been exceeded. Another expression for exposure is mg/kgdiet. All assumptions made should be clearly stated and all sources of data used indicated. An estimate of the likely error bounds for any estimate is important, as is a statement as to who is being protected by the estimate. 

2 Approaches to determining exposure to migrants from packaging of foodstuffs 

There are a number of different approaches (Rees andTeimant 1993, Parmar et al. 1997, Kroes et al. 2002) which can be used in order to obtain estimates of consumption of different foodstuffs and any exposure to chemical 

Per capita estimates of food chemical intake can be made for virtually every European country. They permit comparison between different European countries. There are in essence two basic approaches for undertaking this estimate multiply the average food consumption of the whole population by anticipated or actual levels of the migrant divide the total available food chemical by the number of individuals in the population. Obviously this approach is unsuitable for migrants, but ideally suited for food additives. 

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