EFSA — Lead in Food (2010), No-Threshold Position

Overview

EFSA’s Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain established in its March 2010 Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food that the previous JECFA provisional tolerable weekly intake of 25 µg/kg b.w./week is no longer appropriate, on the basis that the dose-response evidence for the most sensitive lead endpoints does not support a threshold (EFSA Pb 2010). EFSA does not therefore set a numeric TWI for lead, but instead reports Benchmark Dose Lower Confidence Limits for three critical endpoints: developmental neurotoxicity in young children, systolic blood pressure effects in adults, and chronic kidney disease prevalence in adults (EFSA Pb 2010).

Critical endpoint BMDLs

BMDL values from EFSA Pb 2010:

Endpoint	Blood lead BMDL	Equivalent dietary intake (µg/kg b.w./day)
Developmental neurotoxicity (young children)	BMDL01 12 µg/L	0.50
Systolic blood pressure (adults)	BMDL01 36 µg/L	1.50
Chronic kidney disease prevalence (adults)	BMDL10 15 µg/L	0.63

The developmental neurotoxicity endpoint is the most sensitive. EFSA assesses the margins of exposure and concludes that for substantial fractions of European children and infants, the margin between current dietary lead exposure and the BMDL01 for neurotoxicity is small enough that adverse effects cannot be excluded at the population level (EFSA Pb 2010).

Dietary exposure ranges (EFSA 2010)

Exposure ranges from EFSA Pb 2010:

Population	Average exposure (µg/kg b.w./day)	High consumer (µg/kg b.w./day)
Adults	0.36 to 1.24	up to 2.43
Children	0.80 to 3.10	up to 5.51
Infants	0.21 to 0.94	—

Cereal products are the dominant dietary contributor; dust and soil are important non-dietary sources for children (EFSA Pb 2010).

Sources

EFSA Pb 2010 — EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain, 2010. Scientific Opinion on Lead in Food.

References

Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. See Sources for this page’s source inventory. Each title links to its source record, which carries the ingest receipt, the extracted values, and the file hash of the document it was built from.

Scientific Opinion on Lead in FoodEFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM) · EFSA Journal 2010;8(4):1570 · 2010 · doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2010.1570Government

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