sciencetalk

De "European Food and Safety Authority" (EFSA) heeft onlangs een rapport uitgebracht over de veilige dosis kwik in voedingsmiddelen (1). In tabel 11 (pag. 46) en 16 (pag. 53) van dat rapport staat per leeftijdscategorie "oververzichtelijk" de chronische blootstelling daaraan (verdeeld over de twee verschillende vormen van kwik).

De tabel bevat echter gegevens die ik niet goed weet te interpreteren.

Er wordt een onderverdeling gemaakt in "minimum, median en maximum", die vervolgens weer worden uitgesplitst in "lower bound, middele bound en upper bound".

Deze gegevens worden gepresenteerd voor zowel het gemiddelde als het 95e percentiel.

Per leeftijdscategorie zijn er bijvoorbeeld 9 verschillende gemiddelden af te lezen. Mijn vraag is wat de verschillen hiertussen zijn.

Ik ben op zoek naar de gemiddelde blootstelling en het 95e percentiel (de dosis waar 95% van de deelnemers onderblijft) per leeftijdscategorie.

1. http://www.efsa.euro...al/doc/2985.pdf

Inmiddels een antwoord gekregen van EFSA:

EFSA’s role is to provide independent scientific advice on matters linked to food and feed safety. EFSA’s risk assessments provide risk managers (i.e. European Commission, European Parliament and Member States) with the sound scientific advice they need to help them take the final legislative or regulatory decisions required to ensure that European food is safe for consumers.

Concerning your specific inquiry, table 11 summarises the chronic dietary exposure to methylmercury and Table 16 summarises the chronic dietary exposure to inorganic mercury. To calculate dietary exposure, EFSA uses consumption data from several dietary surveys that were conducted in different European countries. However, since different methodologies were used in these different surveys, the consumption data from these different surveys cannot be combined into one consumption database and are treated per survey separately. This means that a chronic dietary exposure is calculated for each survey separately and the Tables 11 and 16, show the lowest, the highest and the median chronic dietary exposure across these surveys. Appendix D (page 211-222), shows for each age group all surveys and the calculated exposure. In addition, for the occurrence data, middle bound (MB), lower bound (LB) and upper bound (UB) concentrations are calculated due to the left-censored data (concentrations below the limit of detection or limit of quantification), using these MB, LB and UB concentrations, MB, LB and UB exposures are calculated.

Due to the fact that consumption data from different surveys cannot be combined into one European consumption database, we cannot calculate one mean and one 95^th percentile European chronic dietary exposure.

Further information on left-censored data can be found in EFSA’s scientific report on left-censored data in dietary exposure assessment of chemical substances, which is available at this link. Further information on the food consumption data used by EFSA can be found at this link.

Should you need further information, please do not hesitate to contact the Ask EFSA Service again.