January 14, 2011
Creme Food® 3.5 Release
by Eimear Kelleher
Creme is delighted to announce the addition of many new features to Creme Food® in its most recent release, Creme 3.5.
Lieke Kuiper (assistant researcher at Creme) has been using the new version of Creme Food®, Creme 3.5, to carry out an exposure assessment to dioxins using the Irish adult population as a reference population for Europe. This is in response to the recent dioxin scare in Germany. Click here to read her blog or contact us if you would like to request a free copy of the report.
Creme Food® version 3.5
The Creme team has been busy over the last number of weeks implementing new features. The features, which are largely based on client requests, include:
• Custom Statistics
• Limit Analysis
• Fortification per 100kcal Assessments
• Energy Assessments
• Upload Table by Type
Creme is delighted to announce the addition of many new features to Creme Food® in its most recent release, Creme 3.5.
Lieke Kuiper (assistant researcher at Creme) has been using the new version of Creme Food®, Creme 3.5, to carry out an exposure assessment to dioxins using the Irish adult population as a reference population for Europe. This is in response to the recent dioxin scare in Germany. Click here to read her blog or contact us if you would like to request a free copy of the report.
Creme Food® version 3.5
The Creme team has been busy over the last number of weeks implementing new features. The features, which are largely based on client requests, include:
• Custom Statistics
• Limit Analysis
• Fortification per 100kcal Assessments
• Energy Assessments
• Upload Table by Type
Custom Statistics
Custom Statistics evolved from various client requests to extract more results from previously run assessments. This exciting new feature allows for many different post-assessment analyses. Users can request additional percentiles which were not requesting during the initial assessment submission. Users can examine different outputs based on demographic information (e.g. gender, age or weight). Another advantage is that it enables users to examine the diet or exposure of a particular subset of the population which has particular consumption patterns.
A practical example of this would be to examine the diets (food groups and nutrients) of those people who consume milk versus those who do not.
Custom Statistics can be accessed via the Output dropdown menu in your chosen assessment folder.
Limit Analysis
This feature outputs just one statistic per option chosen. With Limit Analysis, users can input a nutrient, toxicological or any other reference value, and calculate the percentage of the population which exceeded or did not meet this particular reference point.
Fortification per 100kcal
Before this release users were only able to fortify per unit weight of food. Now, based on our customers’ request, users can select fortification in g per 100kcal as an assessment type in the Assessment Wizard. Users can also see at the fortification stage how this new concentration per 100kcal relates to per 100g of food.
Energy Assessments
This is a new type of assessment similar to nutrient assessment but instead it calculates energy values from food groups of interest. Again this is chosen as an assessment type in the Assessment Wizard.
Upload Table by Type
Saving time for our users, it is now possible to upload tables directly into Creme Food® without having to first create them. This option is available in the Data Manager under the Data dropdown list. It is possible to upload from a number of file formats, including CSV and various ASCII delimited formats.
We hope that our clients will benefit from these new features. In the coming weeks we will provide instructions and examples in the Documents tab on how to use these features. Please contact us with any queries on using the new additions or any suggestion to help improve the software. You can also contact us to request a free copy of the exposure assessment to dioxins report.
Once again thanks to our clients for all of their input and feedback and please let us know if there is anything else you would like to see in our next release of Creme Food®.
January 13, 2011
Exposure Assessment to Dioxins Using the Irish Adult Population as a Reference Population for Europe
by Lieke Kuiper
In late December 2010 the first reports of dioxin contamination of German eggs surfaced. Since then, dioxin levels exceeding legal limits have also been found in poultry and pork. To estimate the severity of this contamination event, Creme has carried out exposure assessments using the Irish adult population consumption data and using different scenarios of contamination. The assessment results were also used to estimate exposures in other European countries.
A conservative exposure estimate was calculated for a ten month exposure period. This is because the first contaminated feed samples were detected as early as March 2010. Several contamination scenarios were examined: the first scenario assumed all consumed samples to have been contaminated with dioxins and the other scenarios assumed contamination levels of 20% and 10% respectively. Exposure was assessed assuming pork, poultry and egg were all contaminated. Contamination levels of two and five times the legal limit for pork, poultry and eggs were used for the contamination scenarios. The severity of exposure was expressed in percentage increase of body burden. This was calculated assuming a steady state body burden of 4000 pg/kg bw.
In the worst case scenario; after a ten month exposure period at five times the legal limit, estimated exposure led to an increase in body burden of 20.6% for the mean consumer and 43.4% for the P95 consumer. However, this is an unlikely scenario and the results of the more likely scenarios of consumption of 20% or 10% contaminated pork, poultry and egg all show a body burden increase below 10%. In the 20% contamination scenario, the highest body burden increase is 8.8% for the P95 consumer and 4.1% for the mean consumer.
These exposure estimates were based on limited data. Samples have been reported to contain two to five times the legal limit of dioxins, but how many of the samples are actually contaminated is unclear. It also remains unclear whether contamination occurred for the full ten month period between the first report of contaminated feed and now or not.
Because of the limited knowledge, exposure was estimated for several scenarios with different assumptions regarding contamination levels and percentages of samples contaminated. Even in the conservative estimate of ten months of exposure to contaminated products, the more likely scenarios where 20% or 10% of consumed products are contaminated, result in a body burden increase for the average and high consumer that remains well below 10%; an increase which EFSA considered of no concern for the Irish pork crisis in 2008.
To request a free copy of the full report including a range of contamination scenarios and European extrapolation of the data please contact us.
A conservative exposure estimate was calculated for a ten month exposure period. This is because the first contaminated feed samples were detected as early as March 2010. Several contamination scenarios were examined: the first scenario assumed all consumed samples to have been contaminated with dioxins and the other scenarios assumed contamination levels of 20% and 10% respectively. Exposure was assessed assuming pork, poultry and egg were all contaminated. Contamination levels of two and five times the legal limit for pork, poultry and eggs were used for the contamination scenarios. The severity of exposure was expressed in percentage increase of body burden. This was calculated assuming a steady state body burden of 4000 pg/kg bw.
In the worst case scenario; after a ten month exposure period at five times the legal limit, estimated exposure led to an increase in body burden of 20.6% for the mean consumer and 43.4% for the P95 consumer. However, this is an unlikely scenario and the results of the more likely scenarios of consumption of 20% or 10% contaminated pork, poultry and egg all show a body burden increase below 10%. In the 20% contamination scenario, the highest body burden increase is 8.8% for the P95 consumer and 4.1% for the mean consumer.
These exposure estimates were based on limited data. Samples have been reported to contain two to five times the legal limit of dioxins, but how many of the samples are actually contaminated is unclear. It also remains unclear whether contamination occurred for the full ten month period between the first report of contaminated feed and now or not.
Because of the limited knowledge, exposure was estimated for several scenarios with different assumptions regarding contamination levels and percentages of samples contaminated. Even in the conservative estimate of ten months of exposure to contaminated products, the more likely scenarios where 20% or 10% of consumed products are contaminated, result in a body burden increase for the average and high consumer that remains well below 10%; an increase which EFSA considered of no concern for the Irish pork crisis in 2008.
To request a free copy of the full report including a range of contamination scenarios and European extrapolation of the data please contact us.
January 3, 2011
New Publication in Food and Chemical Toxicology
"European consumer exposure to cosmetic products: A framework for conducting population exposure assessments, Part 2", a paper written by Cronan McNamara from Creme along with leading analysts from the cosmetics industry, has been accepted for publication in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
In this paper, the authors discuss new and reliable exposure data which can now be used in the evaluation of the toxicological safety of ingredients in cosmetic products.
This study is referred to as part 2 because it complements the data set obtained previously (part 1) and published in 2007 by the authors. This publication focuses on detailed consumer habits and practice data for the following five cosmetic product types: hair styling, hand cream, liquid foundation, mouthwash and shower gel.
For more information on the publication, please see the following DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2010.11.016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
