Items Tagged with 'exposure science'

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) said the EU health-based guidance value for acute glycerol exposure from beverages can also be applied to solid foods, adding to recent discussions around glycerol intoxication in young children and safe levels of exposure.

Researchers observed inflammatory responses, gut barrier damage, and immune effects relevant to allergy development in experiments with two emulsifiers, soy lecithin and DATEM. Study author Dr. Cezmi Akdis said the findings support a more comprehensive framework for evaluating food additive safety.

The European Food Safety Authority published an updated scientific opinion on emerging and novel brominated flame retardants in food. Insufficient data prevented full risk assessments for most of the 27 chemicals evaluated.

The review also identifies six health effect categories for further evaluation as part of efforts to support the development of health-based values for the “forever chemicals.”

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) lowered the acceptable daily intake for trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) to a quarter of the previously established level, and also set an acute reference dose for the chemical for the first time. 

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to exposure scientist and toxicologist Dr. Alex LeBeau about the generation, interpretation, and responsible communication of food contaminant testing data—a conversation raised by recent reports on arsenic in candy from Florida officials.

The 102^nd meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) took place in June 2026 in Nanjing, China. Key outcomes included the establishment of new, temporary acceptable daily intakes (ADIs) for two substances.

Dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (DL-PCBs) are environmental contaminants generated as byproducts of industrial processes and waste incineration. EFSA’s risk assessment resulted in a lower tolerable weekly intake, which Europeans generally exceed.

EFSA conducted an acute exposure assessment for glycerol in slushies and dealcoholized wine following reports of toddlers and young children experiencing glycerol intoxication due to excessive slushie consumption in a single sitting.

The findings, based on a novel approach and published in Nature Health, suggest that traditional chemical safety assessments may overlook combined exposures and real-life environmental conditions. Transcriptomic analysis implicated a non-genotoxic mode of action by which pesticides interfere with normal cell function and identity processes.