Abbreviation for "acceptable daily intake" (acceptable daily intake = ETD permitted daily dose). This refers to the tolerable amount of a substance that a person can take in daily over their entire lifetime without any negative or adverse health effects. As a rule, the quantities are determined in animal experiments, whereby the relevant substances (pollutants) are ingested daily via the diet over a longer period of time. The information is then given in mg/kg body weight.
An amount of substance that has not caused any changes in animal experiments is called the no-effect level (NEL). This value is divided by 100 to calculate the maximum tolerable amount in humans. The "safety factor 100" is intended to take into account unknown risks, such as particularly sensitive individuals, extreme deviations from average consumption and other unknown factors. So if a dose of 100 mg/kg body weight per day is considered safe for the animal, the acceptable daily intake for humans would be only 1 mg/kg body weight/day. This is the ADI value.
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