Comparison of estimated daily per capita intakes of flavouring substances with no-observed-effect levels from animal studies.

A study was conducted to determine the margins of safety between no-observed-effect levels (NOELs) and daily per capita intake of flavouring substances evaluated by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) using the safety evaluation procedure for flavouring substances. The safety evaluation procedure provides a practical method for integrating data on intake, structure-activity relationships, metabolism and toxicity to evaluate flavouring substances. The comparison of NOELs to intake reinforces the fact that the margins of safety between intake of flavouring substances and their representative NOELs is very large. 98% of flavouring substances have margins of safety greater than 1000, illustrating that even if intake was underestimated by several fold, in almost every case, a wide margin of safety would still exist.