Use of cut‐off values on the limits of quantification reported in datasets used to estimate dietary exposure to chemical contaminants

Published on: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0200

The analytical data on the presence of chemical contaminants in food and feed used in dietary exposure assessments in EFSA scientific outputs often contain a high number of left‐censored data, i.e. non‐quantified/non‐detected data; EFSA usually uses the so‐called substitution method to make use of this type of data in its assessments. However, the presence of left‐censored data together with a wide range of detection and/or quantification limits is often an important source of uncertainty associated with the dietary exposure estimates. This Technical Report describes a step‐wise approach to select the most appropriate cut‐off values on the provided censoring limits based on: 1) legal requirements; 2) typical expanded uncertainty levels; or 3) distributions of the quantified values and reported limits of quantification. This approach is intended to minimise the influence of left‐censored data on the uncertainty associated with the dietary exposure estimates.
© European Food Safety Authority, 2015

Use of cut‐off values on the limits of quantification reported in datasets used to estimate dietary exposure to chemical contaminants