How safe are food additives?

Some additives have been used for decades or even centuries, so we have a lot of experience regarding both their usefulness and their safety. To continue to assure safety, scientific experts review these traditional additives every so often, and any reasonable doubts are evaluated. New additives must not only have a demonstrated useful purpose, but also go through a thorough and rigorous safety evaluation before they can be approved for use.

Basically, both new and traditional additives are tested by an independent experts who evaluate whatever information is available. In the EU this group of experts is the Scientific Committee for Foods. The Information they evaluate includes lifetime feeding studies which assess how the additive is handled in the body, stability of the additive in different foods and beverages, and the intended uses in order to understand how much of the additive is likely to be consumed. If the experts feel that specific information is lacking, they will require additional tests

. Once sufficient information is available for a thorough evaluation, the experts will calculate an acceptable daily intake (ADI) for the additive i.e., the amount of the additive that can be daily consumed safely over a lifetime. This is typically done by finding, through extensive testing, the level at which no effect is observed and then dividing by a safety factor of typically 100. The purpose of the safety factor is to provide additional security in case humans are more sensitive to the additive than the test animals are, and in case some people are more sensitive than others.

Next, the regulators apply the ADI to establish the amount of the additive which may be used, taking into account the likely consumption of the foods and beverages which will contain the additive as well as the amount of the additive needed to achieve its function. These permitted levels ensure that the total consumption of an additive is normally far below the ADI. It is important to note that since the ADI is based on lifetime feeding studies, and because the ADI has a built-in safety factor, the consumption of an additive above its ADI on a given day is not a cause for concern. In fact, human dietary surveys have confirmed many times that consumption above the ADI on one day is more than accounted for by consumption comfortably below the ADI on most other days.

Next: Can people be allergic to food additives?