Overview
The EFSA CONTAM Panel established a tolerable weekly intake for methylmercury of 1.3 µg Hg/kg body weight per week in its December 2012 Scientific Opinion on Mercury and Methylmercury in Food, lowering the prior JECFA-aligned value of 1.6 µg/kg b.w./week (EFSA Hg 2012). The revision incorporates Faroe Islands and Seychelles cohort data with adjustment for the protective effect of n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish, and is anchored on developmental neurotoxicity in offspring exposed in utero through maternal seafood consumption (EFSA Hg 2012).
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| TWI | 1.3 µg Hg/kg b.w./week (expressed as Hg) |
| Prior reference (JECFA-aligned) | 1.6 µg/kg b.w./week |
| Critical endpoint | Developmental neurotoxicity (in utero, maternal seafood) |
| Cohort basis | Faroe Islands and Seychelles |
| Adopting body | EFSA CONTAM Panel |
| Adopted | December 2012 |
Mean dietary methylmercury exposure across European age groups generally does not exceed the TWI except for toddlers and other children in some Member State surveys. The 95th percentile dietary methylmercury exposure is close to or above the TWI for all age groups. High fish consumers can substantially exceed the TWI (EFSA Hg 2012).
Sources
- EFSA Hg 2012 — EFSA CONTAM Panel, 2012. Scientific Opinion on Mercury and Methylmercury in Food.
References
Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. This is not the full corpus for this page; it is only what the prose above draws on. The complete set of sources is listed under Sources below. 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.
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 4 sections added |