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Special topic portal on chemicals’ harmful effects

Food, fish and agriculture Food safety Health and diseases

Research carried out by the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, into the many thousands of chemical substances that people may be exposed, is contributing to a paradigm shift in risk assessment: Instead of evaluating the substances’ potential harmful effects individually, the research shows the need to look at the overall cocktail effect. Explore the institute’s special topic portal on chemical exposure and learn more about research efforts in this area.

People are daily exposed to many chemical substances from many different sources – e.g. through foods, cosmetics, consumer goods and pharmaceuticals. When exposed to a mixture of numerous chemicals simultaneously, some of the chemicals can have a significant negative effect even at low doses.

The National Food Institute conducts research into potentially harmful chemical substances and assesses their consequences for food safety with a particular focus on endocrine disrupting chemicals and cocktail effects.

This research is contributing to a paradigm shift in risk assessment: Instead of evaluating the substances’ potential harmful effects individually, the research shows the need to look at the overall cocktail effect. The institute has among other things headed up Denmark’s largest research project to date on chemical cocktail effects in the area of food.

The National Food Institute also carries out the Danish pesticide monitoring programme in cooperation with the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, which analyses pesticide residues in samples of fruit, vegetables, grains, processed foods and meat. The institute takes part in planning the control and working out the sampling plans as well as analysing and reporting the results from the control.

The institute is also the architect behind a comprehensive QSAR database. The QSAR database contains computer predictions for the harmful effects of more than 600,000 chemical substances. By searching for a substance in the database, researchers, authorities and companies can quickly find out if there are signs that the substance has any carcinogenic or other adverse environmental and health properties. This knowledge can help to e.g. prioritize which chemicals it is important evaluate first.

Read more

Explore the National Food Institute’s new special topic portal on chemical exposure and read about the institute’s activities and research results in this field.

On the institute’s website you will also find special topic portals on antimicrobial resistance, nutrition and dietary habits, risk assessments and disease-causing microorganisms. More topics will be added over time.

Please fill out this form if you would like to see other topics explained in greater detail on the website www.food.dtu.dk.