Metals safety assessment

At one time, cobalt chloride, a salt of the metal cobalt, was added to beer in the USA as a foam stabilizer. Such salts had been used to treat people with anaemia at doses of 300 mg per day without any apparent problems. However, heavy beer drinkers, who drank about 10 litres per day, suffered effects on the heart, known as cardiomyopathy, a degeneration of the heart muscle, which was eventually ascribed to the cobalt. It transpired that, while cobalt alone was apparently not toxic to the heart, even at single doses many times higher than the exposure from the additive in beer, in the exceptionally heavy drinkers the toxic effects of cobalt were greatly increased. It turned out that the victims were malnourished individuals and deficient in particular amino acids, which was an important factor in increasing the toxicity of the cobalt. Furthermore, the excessive alcohol intake was itself an additional factor. The potentiation of the toxicity of cobalt was unexpected and so had not been taken into account in the safety assessment. This illustrates the difficulty of anticipating all possible circumstances in safety evaluation. 

Metal foodstuff packaging continues to develop to make use of new materials, new technologies and new market opportunities. The safety assessment of new materials, technologies and applications will always be a fundamental part of any new development, indeed one of the drivers of new product development is to simplify and improve the safety assessment process without prejudicing the existing food safety attributes of the packaging. 

Safety assessments of new developments in metal foodstuff packaging... 

Regulation and safety assessment of ECM is a rapidly evolving area, particularly within the EU. This is even more the situation with metal foodstuff packaging as the need for harmonised comprehensive legislation intensifies. It seems... 

This is an average value of metal erosion during the length of service and may vary with soil conditions. In coastal areas, for instance, where the subsoil water is saline, erosion of metal would be much more rapid and a further safety factor must be considered. Field experience will be a better guide to assess this. 

This study assesses the potential impact of the changes in the soil condition on agricultural product safety and examines the transportation of heavy metals from soils to rice. 

Agent Hydrolysis and Treatment of Metal Parts (Steps 8, 10, 13, and 16), 115 Treatment of Hydrolysates and Dunnage by Supercritical Water Oxidation (Steps 11, 12, and 14), 116 Assessment of Integration Issues, 118 Component Integration, 118 Process Operability, 119 Monitoring and Control Strategy, 119 Maintenance Issues, 119 Process Safety, 120 Worker Health and Safety, 121 Public Safety, 121... 

What are the uses of batteries and fuel cells How is electrochemical technology used to produce and protect metals How can you assess the environmental and safety issues associated with these technologies ... 

Recommendation 3-3b. The Army should evaluate the efficacy of allowing frozen munitions to thaw before feeding them into the metal parts furnace of a modified baseline process in a manner similar to the procedure used at JACADS. If the Army intends to include this process step, associated safety, design, maintenance, and regulatory approval issues should be assessed. 

The risk to health from chemicals in food can be assessed by comparing estimates of dietary exposure with recommended safe levels of exposure. For most metals and other elements, these are the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intakes (PTWIs) and the Provisional Tolerable Daily Intakes (PTDIs) recommended by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation International Programme on Chemical Safety (JECFA). The European Commission s Scientific Committee on Food has established other relevant safe levels. These are Acceptable Daily Intakes (ADIs) for chemicals added to food, and Tolerable Daily Intakes (TDIs) for chemical contaminants. The use of the term tolerable implies permissibility rather than acceptability. All the above recommendations are estimates of the amount of substance that can be ingested over a lifetime without appreciable risk, expressed on a daily or weekly basis as appropriate. 

Peijnenburg WJGM, Jager T. 2003. Monitoring approaches to assess bioaccessibility and bioavailability of metals matrix issues. Ecotoxicol Environ Safety 56 63-77. 

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