Overview
This European Commission Scientific Committee on Food opinion (SCF/CS/CNTM/OTH/18 Final, adopted 12 December 2001, published 8 January 2002) is the EU regulatory toxicology basis for the inorganic-tin maximum levels for canned foods that were subsequently set in EC 1881/2006 and that have carried forward to the current EU 2023/915 inorganic-tin canned-food limits (200 mg/kg general canned food, 100 mg/kg canned beverages, 50 mg/kg canned baby food and infant/young-child formula). The opinion synthesizes the inorganic tin acute-toxicity literature (including the Benoy 1971 symptomatic-threshold work and subsequent outbreak reports) and derives the regulatory threshold based on the no-observed-adverse-effect-level (NOAEL) for acute gastrointestinal effects in humans with appropriate uncertainty factors.
Key conclusions
The opinion establishes that acute tin exposure from canned food can produce gastrointestinal effects (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea) at concentrations above approximately 200 mg/kg in liquid foods and approximately 250 mg/kg in solid foods, with susceptible-population (infants, young children) NOAELs at lower concentrations. The committee concludes that the 200 mg/kg general food maximum level and the 100 mg/kg beverage maximum level are protective against acute gastrointestinal effects with appropriate margin, and that the 50 mg/kg infant-and-young-child food maximum level provides additional precautionary margin for the most-susceptible population.
Implications
- Certification: Authoritative EU regulatory toxicology basis for the current inorganic-tin canned-food maximum levels. Useful as a citing reference for HMTc tin thresholds on canned-food product rows. Complements the U.S. ATSDR 2005 toxicological profile for tin and the primary Benoy 1971 toxicology work.
- Courses: Standard EU regulatory reference for the canned-food tin opinion.
Wiki pages updated on ingest
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; 5 sections added; narrative text revised |