Updating the Metal Dietary Exposure Screening Tool
The IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee invests in the training and education of future scientists and leaders in the fields of food and chemical safety and food toxicology by supporting a Summer Fellowship Program for doctoral students. This project focuses on updating the Metal Dietary Exposure Screening Tool.
Detection of heavy metals at trace levels in foods and food ingredients is common given the unavoidable presence of metals in nature coupled with advancement in analytical methods and lower detection limits. In 2015, the Heavy Metal Subcommittee of the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee sponsored the development of a Metal Dietary Exposure Screening Tool and publication of the paper titled “Partitioning of Dietary Metal Intake—A Metal Dietary Exposure Screening Tool”. The tool provides a screening-level approach that serves as a first step in a tiered risk assessment process to evaluate potential public health risks when confronted with the detection of select heavy metals in foods and food ingredients. IAFNS and the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) have agreed to collaborate on the continued development and biennial updating of the Metal Dietary Exposure Screening tool.
Institution: University of Rochester
Summer Fellow: Candace Wong, PhD Candidate
Year Awarded: 2019
Access the Metal Dietary Exposure Screening Tool.
Read more: Review of Regulatory Reference Values and Background Levels for Heavy Metals in the Human Diet
Learn more about the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee.
