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Development of a new modelling tool (FACET) to assess exposure to chemical migrants from food packaging.

Oldring PK, O’Mahony C, Dixon J, Vints M, Mehegan J, Dequatre C, Castle L.
Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2014;31(3):444-65. doi: 10.1080/19440049.2013.862348. Epub 2014 Jan 15.
15/01/2014
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Development of a new modelling tool (FACET) to assess exposure to chemical migrants from food packaging.

The approach used to obtain European Union-wide data on the usage and concentration of substances in different food packaging materials is described. Statistics were collected on pack sizes and market shares for the different materials used to package different food groups. The packaging materials covered were plastics (both flexible and rigid), metal containers, light metal packaging, paper and board, as well as the adhesives and inks used on them. An explanation as to how these data are linked in various ways in the FACET exposure modelling tool is given as well as an overview of the software along with examples of the intermediate tables of data. The example of bisphenol A (BPA), used in resins that may be incorporated into some coatings for canned foodstuffs, is used to illustrate how the data in FACET are combined to produce concentration distributions. Such concentration distributions are then linked probabilistically to the amounts of each food item consumed, as recorded in national food consumption survey diaries, in order to estimate exposure to packaging migrants. Estimates of exposure are at the level of the individual consumer and thus can be expressed for various percentiles of different populations and subpopulations covered by the national dietary surveys.

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Estimates of dietary exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging using food consumption and packaging usage data: a refined deterministic approach and a fully probabilistic (FACET) approach.

Oldring PK, Castle L, O’Mahony C, Dixon J.
Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2014;31(3):466-89. doi: 10.1080/19440049.2013.860240. Epub 2014 Jan 20
20/01/2014
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Estimates of dietary exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging using food consumption and packaging usage data: a refined deterministic approach and a fully probabilistic (FACET) approach.

Estimates of dietary exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging using food consumption and packaging usage data: a refined deterministic approach and a fully probabilistic (FACET) approach.

The FACET tool is a probabilistic model to estimate exposure to chemicals in foodstuffs, originating from flavours, additives and food contact materials. This paper demonstrates the use of the FACET tool to estimate exposure to BPA (bisphenol A) from light metal packaging. For exposure to migrants from food packaging, FACET uses industry-supplied data on the occurrence of substances in the packaging, their concentrations and construction of the packaging, which were combined with data from a market research organisation and food consumption data supplied by national database managers. To illustrate the principles, UK packaging data were used together with consumption data from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) dietary survey for 19-64 year olds for a refined deterministic verification. The UK data were chosen mainly because the consumption surveys are detailed, data for UK packaging at a detailed level were available and, arguably, the UK population is composed of high consumers of packaged foodstuffs. Exposures were run for each food category that could give rise to BPA from light metal packaging. Consumer loyalty to a particular type of packaging, commonly referred to as packaging loyalty, was set. The BPA extraction levels used for the 15 types of coating chemistries that could release BPA were in the range of 0.00005-0.012 mg dm(-2). The estimates of exposure to BPA using FACET for the total diet were 0.0098 (mean) and 0.0466 (97.5th percentile) mg/person/day, corresponding to 0.00013 (mean) and 0.00059 (97.5th percentile) mg kg(-1) body weight day(-1) for consumers of foods packed in light metal packaging. This is well below the current EFSA (and other recognised bodies) TDI of 0.05 mg kg(-1) body weight day(-1). These probabilistic estimates were compared with estimates using a refined deterministic approach drawing on the same input data. The results from FACET for the mean, 95th and 97.5th percentile exposures to BPA lay between the lowest and the highest estimates from the refined deterministic calculations. Since this should be the case, for a fully probabilistic compared with a deterministic approach, it is concluded that the FACET tool has been verified in this example. A recent EFSA draft opinion on exposure to BPA from different sources showed that canned foods were a major contributor and compared results from various models, including those from FACET. The results from FACET were overall conservative.

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Light Metal Packaging Methodology for Foodstuffs – FACET

Oldring P. K. T. – Valspar Corporation UK, F. Savrij Droste, R. Whitaker, D. Smith
Jct Coatings Tech 11(1):30-40
01/01/2014
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Light Metal Packaging Methodology for Foodstuffs – FACET

Light metal packaging for foodstuffs primarily encompasses cans, closures, and aerosols. For cans used in the European Union (EU), the majority are beverage cans with about 45 billion used per annum (pa) compared to ap-proximately 20 billion food cans pa. Metal closures are subdivided into about 20 billion closures for jars and 80 bil-ion crowns for bottles per year. The ILSI Monograph on Light Metal Packaging for Foodstuffs1 contains background information for the reader unfamiliar with this type of packaging. The FACET project (Flavours, Additives and food Contact materials Exposure Tool) was a four-year project that was partially funded by the European Commission within its Framework FP7 Programme. The project ran from September 2008 until August 2012. FACET was coordinated by University College Dublin and it involved 20 research partners from across Europe, coming from academia, industry, research centers, and small- to medium-sized enterprises. Hearty et al. provided an early overview of the project plan2 and Oldring et al.3,4 offered a view of the part of the project plan that dealt specifically with packaging materials. More recently, the use of FACET for assessing exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging has been reported.5 As the name indicates, the FACET expo-sure tool provides a single platform with the functionality to estimate consumer exposure to three types of food chemicals, namely chemical food additives (“E-numbers”), chemically defined flavoring substances added to foods, and sub-stances used to make food contact materials. A PC-based desktop application, the FACET exposure tool is publicly avail-able and free of charge. The software tool was developed and populated with data gathered throughout the course of the project, with the facility of uploading any additional data that the end-user might have. This article describes how the information was gathered for the light metal packaging portion of the FACET tool.

FACET Light metal packaging methodology for foodstuffs coatings tech

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Modelling framework for assessment of dietary exposure to added flavouring substances within the FACET (Flavours, Additives, and Food Contact Material Exposure Task) project.

Mistura Lorenz, Stefania Sette, Cian O’Mahony, Karl-Heinz Engel, John Mehegan, Catherine Leclercq On behalf of the Flavours, Additives, and Food Contact Material Exposure Task (FACET) Consortium
Food and Chemical Toxicology Volume 58, August 2013, Pages 236-241
01/08/2013
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Modelling framework for assessment of dietary exposure to added flavouring substances within the FACET (Flavours, Additives, and Food Contact Material Exposure Task) project.

This paper provides a model to assess dietary exposure to flavouring substances intentionally added to food. The purpose is to describe the approaches currently available and their scientific basis. The proposed exposure model for flavouring substances envisages three different levels of refinement: basic, intermediate and refined. At the two first levels, the model may be applied to all 2543 substances actually in use in Europe, while the refined level has been applied to 41 target flavouring substances selected within the FACET project. The refined level entails the use of the probability of addition of the flavouring substance added to the food and of correction factors related to losses owing to the processing of a food.

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FACET: Light metal packaging methodology

Oldring P. K. T., C. O’Mahony et al
January 2014 Jct Coatings Tech 11(1):30-40
03/01/2014
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FACET: Light metal packaging methodology

Agency Light metal packaging for food stuffs primarily encompasses cans, closures and aerosols. For cans used in the European Union (EU), the majority are beverage cans with about 45 billion used per annum (pa) compared to approximately 20 billion food cans. Metal closures are subdivided into about 20 billion closures for jars and 80 billion crowns for bottles per year. The ILSI Monograph on Light Metal Packaging for Food stuffs ( contains background information for the reader unfamiliar with this type of packaging. The FACET project (Flavours, Additives and food Contact materials Exposure Tool) was a four-year project that was partially funded by the European Commission within its Framework FP7 Programme. The project ran from September 2008 until August 2012. FACET was coordinated by University College Dublin and it involved 20 research partners from across Europe, coming from academia, industry, research centers, and small- to medium-sized enterprises. Hearty et al. provided an early overview of the project plan and Oldring et al.3,4 offered a view of the part of the project plan that dealt specifically with packaging materials. More recently, the use of FACET for assessing exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging has been reported.5As the name indicates, the FACET expo-sure tool provides a single platform with the functionality to estimate consumer exposure to three types of food chemicals, namely chemical food additives(“E-numbers”), chemically defined flavor-ing substances added to foods, and sub-stances used to make food contact materials. A PC-based desktop application, the FACET exposure tool is publicly avail-able and free of charge. The software tool was developed and populated with data gathered throughout the course of the project, with the facility of uploading any additional data that the end-user might have. This article describes how the information was gathered for the light metal packaging portion of the FACET tool.

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