Food additives hazard identification

Hazard identification, step one, means identification of new chemicals or other factors that may cause harmful health effects. Previously, novel hazards were usually observed in case studies or after accidents or other excessive exposures, usually in occupational environments. Today, thorough toxicity studies are required on all pesticides, food additives, and drugs. New chemicals also have to be studied for their potential toxic effects. Thus, earlier hazards were in most cases identified after they had caused harmful effects in humans. Today, most chemical products have been evaluated for their toxicity with experimental animals. Therefore, hazard identification has become a preventive procedure based on safety studies conducted before a chemical compound or product reaches the market, and before individuals are exposed to it. ... 

The degree of confidence in the final estimation of risk depends on variability, uncertainty, and assumptions identified in all previous steps. The nature of the information available for risk characterization and the associated uncertainties can vary widely, and no single approach is suitable for all hazard and exposure scenarios. In cases in which risk characterization is concluded before human exposure occurs, for example, with food additives that require prior approval, both hazard identification and hazard characterization are largely dependent on animal experiments. And exposure is a theoretical estimate based on predicted uses or residue levels. In contrast, in cases of prior human exposure, hazard identification and hazard characterization may be based on studies in humans and exposure assessment can be based on real-life, actual intake measurements. The influence of estimates and assumptions can be evaluated by using sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. - Risk assessment procedures differ in a range of possible options from relatively unso-... 

In general, nitrosamines arise only in very low concentrations. Since some of these compounds are a great health hazard, they should be detectable below 0.1 ppm in food for human consumption. The same procedures are available for identifying volatile nitrosamines which have been described earlier for the analysis of aroma constituents (cf. 5.2). However, precautions should be taken during the isolation step. Isolation of nitrosamines should not proceed at low pH since an acid medium in the presence of residual meat nitrites promotes further de novo synthesis of nitrosamines. Since the isolated fraction of neutral volatile confounds, which also includes nitrosamines, is highly conplex in composition, reliable nitrosamines identification by gas chromatographic retention data is not possible. Additional mass spectrometric data are needed to verify the chemical structure. 

Future development will continue for a highly productive multi-compound trace analysis for the quantitation of mostly regulated target compounds. In addition, especially to comply with the aspects of food safety and product-safety requirements also non-targeted analytical techniques for the identification of potentially hazardous contaminants will evolve applying combined full scan and accurate mass capabilities. 

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