efsa-opinion-chromium-food-drinking-water

Chromium in food and drinking water
Table 10: Summary statistics of the chronic exposure assessment (ng/kg b.w. per day) for Cr (VI)
across all European dietary surveys through the consumption of bottled water. Dietary surveys with no
data on consumption of bottled water were not included. Estimates were rounded up to one decimal
place.
Mean exposure (ng/kg b.w per day)
Lower bound (LB)
Upper bound (UB)
Min Median Max Min Median Max
Infants 7.3 - (a) 32.4 28.2 - (a) 149.8
Toddlers < 0.1 6.9 13.5 < 0.1 26.4 62.5
Other children < 0.1 4.1 11.6 < 0.1 16.2 44.8
Adolescents < 0.1 1.4 9.6 < 0.1 6.3 35.7
Adults < 0.1 0.7 10.1 < 0.1 2.8 37.8
Elderly < 0.1 3.4 7.8 < 0.1 15.7 28.9
Very Elderly 0.1 3.6 6.6 0.5 17.4 24.6
95 th percentile exposure (b) (ng/kg b.w per day)
Lower bound (LB)
Upper bound (UB)
Min Median Max Min Median Max
Infants 38.3 - (c) - (c) - (c) - (c) 143.8
Toddlers 0.0 27.6 39.9 0.0 109.8 148.7
Other children 0.0 20.0 33.0 0.0 76.9 126.4
Adolescents 0.0 10.3 29.0 0.0 38.2 107.9
Adults 0.0 4.0 28.5 0.0 16.3 106.3
Elderly 0.6 10.2 23.7 5.4 47.0 88.1
Very Elderly 5.1 10.6 19.7 18.8 49.7 75.8
(a): Not calculated since estimates were only available from two dietary surveys;
(b): The 95 th percentile estimates obtained on dietary surveys/age classes with less than 60 observations may not be
statistically robust (EFSA, 2011b). Those estimates were not included in this table.
(c): Not calculated since estimates were only available from one dietary survey.
Similarly to what is observed in Table 9 for drinking water as such, the maximum exposure to Cr(VI)
through the consumption of bottled water was estimated in the youngest populations (‘Infants’ and
‘Toddlers’) (Table 10). No exposure through the consumption of bottled water were reported in
several dietary surveys, while the maximum estimates were 149.8 ng/kg b.w. per day (UB) for
‘Infants’ mean consumers and 148.7 ng/kg b.w. per day (UB) for ‘Toddlers’ at the 95 th percentile
exposure. As expected, the estimated exposure to Cr(VI) through consumption of bottled water was
lower than that estimated through the consumption of all types of water, mainly due to the small
amount of consumption data reported for bottled water (27.7 % of the total). However, in those dietary
surveys with relatively high consumption of bottled water, chromium occurrence levels higher in
bottled water than in other types of water led to Cr(VI) exposure levels similar to those estimated in
the scenario on all types of water (e.g. 9.6 ng/kg b.w. per day for the mean exposure (LB) in
‘Adolescents’ through the consumption of bottled water and 10.2 ng/kg b.w. per day for all types of
water).
Further scenarios, as commented above, considering the additional contribution of the water used to
prepare certain foods before their consumption (such as coffee, tea infusions, and dry infant and
follow-on food) were evaluated using a worst-case scenario with no reduction of Cr(VI) into Cr(III).
To address this additional contribution to the exposure to Cr(VI), the consumption data reported for
the prepared foods were linked to the occurrence data in tap water (for coffee and tea) and still mineral
water (infant and follow-on food) (see occurrence values in Table 7). When the consumption of coffee
and tea infusions were reported as solid, appropriate conversion factors were applied to tap water
EFSA Journal 2014;12(3):3595 58