Part.3 - How the EU ensures the safety of plastics
05.
The weight of evidence is critical for decision making
Evaluating the safety of a substance takes a lot of time and resources: European authorities base their opinions on the entire scientific data available up-to-date, sometimes among thousands of different epidemiological, exploratory and regulatory studies!
Authorities systematically filter and rank all these studies depending on:
- Their quality vs. official laboratory requirements,
- Their reproducibility,
- Their relevance for human health,
- How their results contradict or fit with all the other available studies…
This process is called the weight of evidence approach.
For specific uses, like food contact materials, if a substance is evaluated as safe, authorities may authorise it, under specific terms and conditions. That is until it is re-evaluated, taking into account the most recent data available.
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