On Wednesday 27 June, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) launched a public consultation online on the genotoxicity assessment of chemical mixtures. The consultation, which will be open until 9 September, does not relate to a harmonised risk assessment methodology but to an EFSA draft statement highlighting the particularities of the assessment.
With this future statement, EFSA hopes to fill a shortfall in its guidance document on harmonised risk assessment methodologies for human health, animal health and ecological risk assessment of combined exposure to multiple chemicals.
The guidelines did not give sufficient detail on the matter, EFSA states. There has often been criticism of EFSA scientific opinions for not taking this factor into account, given, for example, that it is a matter of exposure to multiple pesticide residues in food, whether fruit or vegetables from conventional farming or from GMOs.
In the draft statement, the EFSA scientific committee underlines in particular that a mixture should be characterised as broadly as possible from the chemical point of view. It points out that, although the characterisation of mixtures is also relevant for other toxicity aspects, it is especially important for assessing genotoxicity. If a mixture contains a substance or more than one substance for which assessment has proven that it/they is/are genotoxic in vivo through administration, the mixture is considered as being genotoxic. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)