response addition
An approach to the risk assessment of mixtures of substances in which responses to each of the individual components are determined and added together in order to predict the response to the mixture as a whole. This approach is only valid if the individual components do not interact with each other, i.e. their effects are completely independent
In food safety risk assessment, response addition is a way to estimate the combined effect of several substances that act independently on the same health outcome. It assumes that each substance contributes separately to the total risk, and the overall effect is the sum of the individual responses.
EFSA uses response addition when evaluating mixtures of chemicals or contaminants in food. This approach helps assess potential health risks from exposure to multiple substances at the same time, ensuring that risk assessments consider the combined impact rather than looking at each chemical in isolation.