On 2016 Nov 02, Zvi Herzig commented:

Thank you. Indeed, a mean daily caffeine intake for coffee drinkers of 374.7 mg/day is below EFSA's level for concern, but still rises to "high risk" using the approach of this study.

On 2016 Nov 02, Dirk Lachenmeier commented:

Thank you for providing the data about caffeine. While coffee was outside of our scope of addictions included in this research project, we actually published a previous paper Lachenmeier DW, 2012, which included a BMD for caffeine of 63 mg/day (human data for systolic pressure increase). While caffeine may not be associated with mortality, there is a range of reported adverse effects (see review in EFSA (2015) cited below). For this reason, the EFSA suggests that single doses of caffeine of more than 200 mg (about 3 mg/kg bw for a 70-kg adult) and habitual caffeine consumption of more than 400 mg per day may give rise to safety concerns (DOI: 10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4102).

On 2016 Nov 01, Zvi Herzig commented:

Had coffee been included it would be assigned a "high risk" MOE of ~4 for personal exposure, between cigarettes and cocaine.

This is based on the average animal oral LD50 for caffeine of 190.5 mg/kg (BMDL10 = 18.7) (link) and daily caffeine intake for coffee drinking of 374.7 mg (5.1 mg/kg) (link).

However, drinking coffee is not positively associated with mortality Crippa A, 2014, highlighting the limitations noted by the authors.

On 2016 Nov 01, Zvi Herzig commented:

Had coffee been included it would be assigned a "high risk" MOE of ~4 for personal exposure, between cigarettes and cocaine.

This is based on the average animal oral LD50 for caffeine of 190.5 mg/kg (BMDL10 = 18.7) (link) and daily caffeine intake for coffee drinking of 374.7 mg (5.1 mg/kg) (link).

However, drinking coffee is not positively associated with mortality Crippa A, 2014, highlighting the limitations noted by the authors.

On 2016 Nov 02, Dirk Lachenmeier commented:

Thank you for providing the data about caffeine. While coffee was outside of our scope of addictions included in this research project, we actually published a previous paper Lachenmeier DW, 2012, which included a BMD for caffeine of 63 mg/day (human data for systolic pressure increase). While caffeine may not be associated with mortality, there is a range of reported adverse effects (see review in EFSA (2015) cited below). For this reason, the EFSA suggests that single doses of caffeine of more than 200 mg (about 3 mg/kg bw for a 70-kg adult) and habitual caffeine consumption of more than 400 mg per day may give rise to safety concerns (DOI: 10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4102).

On 2016 Nov 02, Zvi Herzig commented:

Thank you. Indeed, a mean daily caffeine intake for coffee drinkers of 374.7 mg/day is below EFSA's level for concern, but still rises to "high risk" using the approach of this study.