Risk assessment of N‐nitrosamines in food

Authors: EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (EFSA CONTAM Panel), Dieter Schrenk, Margherita Bignami, Laurent Bodin, James Kevin Chipman, Jesús del Mazo, Christer Högstrand, L.A.P. Hoogenboom, Jean‐Charles Leblanc, Carlo Nebbia, Elsa Nielsen, Evangelia Ntzani, Annette Petersen, Salomon Sand, Tanja Schwerdtle, Christiane Vleminckx, Heather Wallace, Romualdo Benigni, Cristina Fortes, Stephen Hecht, Marco Iammarino, Olaf Mosbach‐Schulz, Francesca Riolo, Anna Christodoulidou, Bettina Grasl‐Kraupp - EFSA Journal 2023 cited by 125

-NAs were extracted from the EFSA occurrence database (n = 2,817) and the literature (n = 4,003). Occurrence data were available for five food categories across TCNAs. Dietary exposure was assessed for two scenarios, excluding (scenario 1) and including (scenario 2) cooked unprocessed meat and fish. TCNAs exposure ranged from 0 to 208.9 ng/kg bw per day across surveys, age groups and scenarios. 'Meat and meat products' is the main food category contributing to TCNA exposure. MOEs ranged from 3,337 to 48 at the P95 exposure excluding some infant surveys with P95 exposure equal to zero. Two major uncertainties were (i) the high number of left censored data and (ii) the lack of data on important food categories. The CONTAM Panel concluded that the MOE for TCNAs at the P95 exposure is highly likely (98-100% certain) to be less than 10,000 for all age groups, which raises a health concern.