Safety evaluation of certain food additives - ipcs inchem

228 SULFITES: ASSESSMENT OF DIETARY EXPOSURE
The data used by the Committee in the present evaluation comprise data on
the concentration of sulfites in foods and beverages and on dietary exposure
assessments based on model diets, individual food surveys and a total diet study
(TDS). They are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2. Summary of data used by the Committee
Country Total diet
study
Food frequency
questionnaire
Individual
dietary
survey
Australia
Analytical
determinations/use
levels reported by
industry
Brazil
France
Germany
Italy
Lebanon
United
Kingdom
3.3 Concentration of sulfites in foods and beverages
Model
diet
Australia (Food Standards Australia New Zealand, 2005), Brazil (Machado,
2007a, 2007c) and Germany (Fricke, 2007) submitted to the Committee recent
analytical data on the concentration of sulfites in foods available on their markets.
Further analytical data referring to foods available on the markets of the United
Kingdom (Food Standards Agency, 2004) and Italy (Leclercq et al., 2000) were
made available to the Committee.
Data on occurrence/use levels of sulfites in foods available on the French
market, as reported by the food industry, were also made available to the Committee
(Bemrah et al., 2008).
All these data are presented in Appendix 1.
Information on the concentration of sulfites in foods and beverages available
on the market and, where applicable, after cooking is very useful to complement the
information on MLs in Codex and national legislation, since it allows the assessment
of current levels of exposure rather than potential levels of exposure in the
population. In fact, as for other additives, sulfites may not be used in all items for
which there are provisions and could be used at levels differing from the MLs.
The Committee noted that the concentrations of sulfites determined
analytically do not always reflect their concentration in foods at the time of ingestion
owing to losses during the processing and storage of treated foods. For example,
dried vegetables, which may contain up to 500 mg sulfites/kg, according to the
current GSFA, are usually rehydrated and cooked before ingestion, resulting in far