JECFA — Lead Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (Withdrawn 2010)

Overview

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, at its 73rd meeting in June 2010, withdrew the long-standing provisional tolerable weekly intake of 25 µg lead per kilogram body weight per week and replaced it with no quantitative international reference value (JECFA 73rd 2010). The Committee concluded that the dose-response data for the critical endpoints (developmental neurotoxicity in children, cardiovascular and renal effects in adults) do not support a threshold-based PTWI and that no value could be considered health-protective at observed general-population dietary exposures (JECFA 73rd 2010).

This withdrawal is the source of the “no safe level of lead” framing that propagates through all subsequent regulatory documents (EFSA 2010 (EFSA Pb 2010), ATSDR 2020 (ATSDR 2020), FDA Closer to Zero 2025 (FDA CTZ Pb 2025), CDC BLRV 2021 (CDC BLRV)). Codex Alimentarius has not adopted a replacement health-based reference value for lead; matrix-specific maximum levels in CXS 193-1995 continue to operate but are not aligned to a single dietary reference (Codex CXS 193-1995).

Withdrawal record

Withdrawal record from JECFA 73rd 2010:

Sources

• JECFA 73rd 2010 — JECFA 73rd meeting, 2010 (WHO TRS 959, 2011). Evaluation of Certain Contaminants 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.

1. Lead (Addendum), 73rd Meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives — Safety Evaluation of Certain Food Additives and ContaminantsJoint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives · WHO Technical Report Series 960 (2011); lead addendum in WHO Food Additives Series No. 64 · 2011 · www.who.intGovernment
2. 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
3. Toxicological Profile for LeadAgency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry · 2020 · doi.org/10.15620/cdc:95222Government
4. Action Levels for Lead in Processed Food Intended for Babies and Young Children: Guidance for IndustryU.S. Food and Drug Administration · U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Human Foods Program · 2025 · www.fda.govGuidance
5. Blood Lead Reference Value (3.5 µg/dL)U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · 2021 · www.cdc.govGovernment
6. General Standard for Contaminants and Toxins in Food and Feed (CXS 193-1995)Codex Alimentarius Commission · Codex Alimentarius (Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme) · 1995 · www.fao.orgGovernment

Update history

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