FDA's priority-based assessment of food additives. III. Specific toxicity parameters.

In this third paper, we focus on a subset of 58 additives in the Priority-Based Assessment of Food Additives (PAFA) Project that have been associated in toxicity studies with specific toxic effects of inherently high concern. Additives producing these effects are assigned to categories based on chemical structure. A probability distribution of "R values" is calculated. We examine whether any apparent correlation exists between chemical structure category assignment and a tendency for compounds in a category to produce certain types of toxic response. Many chemical structure categories include additives having little or no toxicological data. Although this circumstance limits the scope of conclusions that may be drawn about structure-activity relationships, certain "trends" in the data appear to be worth additional future investigation.