Food Chemistry Risk Assessment of Food Contaminants

Chemical contaminants can enter the food chain at all levels, i.e., during production, harvest, manufacturing including packaging, and storage. Their sources are manifold including infections by toxin-generating organisms, environmental contamination, process-related contaminants and migration form packaging materials etc. The toxicological risk assessment of these compounds comprises a series of steps starting from a thorough description of the chemical including its generation and analytics, its sources and levels in the environment and in food via an analysis of the exposure to a characterization of its toxicity. The latter includes dossiers on the toxicokinetics, the mode of action, the adverse effects in animals and humans and the final assessment of the consumer's risk. For this purpose, various tools have been developed which start from a classification of the contaminant as genotoxic or non-genotoxic. While for non-genotoxic compounds, maximum 'thresholded' exposure levels can be considered as safe, a margin-of-exposure approach describes the 'distance of safety' between overt carcinogenic doses in experimental animals and the actual exposure levels in humans.