The estimation of exposure to food packaging materials. 3. Development of consumption factors and food type distribution factors from data collected on Irish Children.

Edel Duffy (1) , Aine Hearty (2) , Sinéad Mccarthy (2) , Michael Gibney (2)

1 Division of Clinical and Molecular Medicine
2 Division of Clinical and Molecular Medicine

There are many initiatives in Europe to try to refine the exposure assessment for food packaging migrants. In the US the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) use food consumption and food type distribution factors to aid the exposure assessment process and generate more realistic estimates of exposure. The present study developed food consumption factors and food type distribution factors for Irish children aged 5-12 years from data collected as part of a National Children's Food Survey (NCFS) completed in Ireland 2003-04, combined with data from the Irish Food Packaging Database 2003-05 and from literature data on surface area to weight ratios for food packaging. Consumption factors are defined as the fraction of a person's diet likely to contact a specific food contact material containing the migrant of interest while food type distribution factors reflect the fraction of all food contacting each material that is aqueous, acidic, alcoholic or fatty. In this study, it was found that “total plastics” had the highest consumption factor of 0.83, while “total paper & board” had a factor of 0.13 and “total metal & alloys” had a factor of 0.06. Although it is tentative to compare the FDA factors with the factors derived in the current study, as the FDA data is for the total US population, Tthe consumption factor for “total plastics” in the present study (0.83) was similar to that used by the FDA (0.79). However, a large difference existed for the consumption factor for “total metal & alloys” in the Irish data (0.06) and the FDA data (0.2). In terms of the type of materials used for foods, glass was used mainly for acidic foods (0.67) while plastic was uniformly used for all food types. The food contact area for plastic packaging for all foods consumed by children was 10.67 dm2/child/day, which is slightly lower than the proposed value for the average European consumer of 12.4 dm2/person/day (ILSI 1997). However this should be expected, as children do not consume as much food as adults. When scenario exposure estimates were calculated, it was found that when using EU assumptions, estimates were much larger than when using consumption factors and food type distribution factors in the exposure assessment, even when conservative assumptions were employed for the consumption factor. This study highlighted the potential use of consumption factors and food type distribution factors in the refinement of the exposure assessment process and how these factors can be calculated using data collected as part of a national food survey.

Mots clés: Life Sciences

Edel Duffy, Aine Hearty, Sinéad Mccarthy, Michael Gibney. The estimation of exposure to food packaging materials. 3. Development of consumption factors and food type distribution factors from data collected on Irish Children.. Food Additives and Contaminants, 2007, 24 (01), pp.63-74. ⟨10.1080/02652030600865475⟩. ⟨hal-00577497⟩