Can the Acceptable Daily Intake system be applied to additives taken by children?
The Acceptable Daily Intake, or ADI, method for evaluating the toxicity and safety of food additives is accepted worldwide by both national and international scientific institutions. Long-term toxicity testing involving dietary exposure of young laboratory animals is essential for the evaluation of possible effects on children, and possible intake in excess of an established ADI. Young animals consume several times more feed during the first months of the experimental study, and so they will ingest a greater proportion of the substance than they would as adults. During this time, they are exposed to levels of the additive that are several times greater than the calculated ADI. Because the ADI principle is based on exposure over a lifetime, a temporary intake in excess of the ADI is not regarded as a health risk. Moreover, the ADI in humans is set 100 times lower than the observed value in animals so that more sensitive groups of the population, such as children or the elderly, are cove
