Scientific Opinion on the risk for public health related to the presence of mercury and methylmercury in food

EFSA was asked by the European Commission to consider new developments regarding inorganic mercury and methylmercury toxicity and evaluate whether the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) provisional tolerable weekly intakes for methylmercury of 1.6 g/kg body weight (b.w.) and of 4 g/kg b.w. for inorganic mercury were still appropriate. In line with JECFA, the CONTAM Panel established a tolerable weekly intake (TWI) for inorganic mercury of 4 g/kg b.w., expressed as mercury. For methylmercury, new developments in epidemiological studies from the Seychelles Child Developmental Study Nutrition Cohort have indicated that n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish may counteract…