REFERENCE
Regulation Standards
The limits and ADIs Canopy compares test results against, grouped by contaminant. Each comes from a different body asking a different question, so they sit at different heights by design.
Heavy metals
Three reference lines, three different questions. Each line comes from a different body asking a different question, so they sit at different heights by design — not because they disagree about the science.
- California Prop 65 (the lowest, strictest line) is a legal warning threshold: a fixed daily amount, set with large safety margins, above which a product sold in California must carry a label.
- The FDA Interim Reference Level is a dietary benchmark for lead — the maximum daily intake from all food the agency uses to flag a potential health concern for children.
- EFSA's tolerable intake is a health-based estimate of what a person can consume over a lifetime without appreciable risk, scaled to body weight so it differs for a child and an adult.
Because they measure different things, a product can fall above one line and below another without contradiction; crossing the Prop 65 line signals a labeling obligation, not that a food is unsafe.
California Proposition 65 (OEHHA)
Proposition 65 is a California law requiring businesses to warn consumers about exposures to chemicals the state has identified as causing cancer or reproductive harm, which include lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury. OEHHA sets “safe harbor” daily exposure levels — a No Significant Risk Level for cancer and a Maximum Allowable Dose Level for reproductive toxicity — below which no warning is required. These are deliberately conservative (the reproductive levels are set a thousandfold below the dose shown to have an effect) and expressed as a fixed amount per day rather than scaled to body weight. They function as a legal warning threshold rather than a medical safety line, so a product crossing one indicates a labeling obligation, not necessarily a health hazard.
Daily limits (fixed, not scaled to body weight)
Source: California OEHHA
U.S. FDA Interim Reference Level (FDA)
The U.S. FDA uses an Interim Reference Level (IRL) to judge whether the lead a person gets from food across their whole diet is a potential health concern. It is a maximum daily dietary intake figure — currently 2.2 micrograms per day for children and 8.8 micrograms per day for women of childbearing age — derived by working backward from the CDC's blood lead reference value and applying a tenfold safety margin. The FDA uses it to inform action levels for foods like baby food and juice, and labels it “interim” because no safe level of lead exposure has been established. The IRL currently exists only for lead; benchmarks for cadmium, arsenic, and mercury are still in development.
Daily limits (lead only)
Source: U.S. FDA
European Food Safety Authority tolerable intake (EFSA)
EFSA is the EU's independent scientific body for food risk assessment. Its expert panels derive health-based tolerable intakes — the amount of a contaminant a person can consume over a lifetime without appreciable risk — expressed per kilogram of body weight per week, so the same standard yields a smaller allowance for a child than for an adult. EFSA has set tolerable weekly intakes for cadmium (2.5 µg/kg body weight) and methylmercury (1.3 µg/kg body weight), but for lead and inorganic arsenic it concluded no safe threshold exists and provides reference points for comparison rather than an allowance. EFSA assesses the science but does not set the EU's legal limits, which are established separately by the European Commission.
Tolerable intake, scaled to body weight
EFSA sets these per kilogram of body weight, so the allowance grows with weight. The figures above recompute for the body weight you enter (an adult by default). Arsenic and mercury limits apply to specific species (inorganic arsenic; methyl / inorganic mercury), while Canopy's basic panel measures the total — so those comparisons are conservative.
Source: EFSA
Glyphosate + AMPA
Four benchmarks bound how much glyphosate — and its main breakdown product, AMPA — is reasonable to ingest in a day. They sit far apart because they answer different questions, and some scale to body weight.
- US EPA sets a health-based limit derived per kilogram of body weight, and its risk assessment effectively includes AMPA.
- EFSA likewise sets a health-based limit per kilogram of body weight whose residue definition effectively includes AMPA.
- California Prop 65 is a fixed cancer-warning threshold for glyphosate (its warning requirement is currently enjoined by the courts).
- EWG is a much stricter, non-governmental benchmark.
US EPA and EFSA effectively cover AMPA, so the combined glyphosate + AMPA intake is the right thing to compare against them. Prop 65 and EWG cover glyphosate only, so comparing the combined value against them is conservative.
US EPA and EFSA limits scale with body weight (above); Prop 65 and EWG are fixed.
U.S. EPA — glyphosate reference dose (cPAD)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets a chronic Population-Adjusted Dose (cPAD), or reference dose, for glyphosate of 1.0 mg per kilogram of body weight per day — the amount a person could be exposed to daily over a lifetime without expected harm. EPA's risk assessment treats AMPA (glyphosate's main breakdown product) as comparable in toxicity, so this benchmark effectively covers both. Because it is per kilogram of body weight, it works out to about 70 mg/day for a 70 kg adult and 20 mg/day for a 20 kg child.
Daily limit (scaled to body weight)
Source: U.S. EPA
EFSA — glyphosate Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)
The European Food Safety Authority sets an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for glyphosate of 0.5 mg per kilogram of body weight per day — the amount considered safe to consume every day over a lifetime. EFSA's residue definition includes AMPA and N-acetyl forms, so the ADI effectively covers them. Scaled to body weight, that is about 35 mg/day for a 70 kg adult and 10 mg/day for a 20 kg child.
Daily limit (scaled to body weight)
Source: EFSA
California Proposition 65 — glyphosate (OEHHA)
Glyphosate is listed under California's Proposition 65 as a chemical known to the state to cause cancer, based on the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifying it as “probably carcinogenic.” OEHHA set a No Significant Risk Level (NSRL) of 1.1 mg/day — a fixed daily amount, not scaled to body weight, above which a cancer warning would ordinarily be required. The NSRL covers glyphosate itself, not AMPA. Note: courts have permanently enjoined California from enforcing the glyphosate cancer warning, so the label requirement is not currently in effect.
Daily limit (fixed, not scaled to body weight)
Source: California OEHHA
Environmental Working Group (EWG)
The Environmental Working Group, a non-governmental advocacy organization, proposes a much stricter health benchmark of 0.01 mg/day for glyphosate, derived with large additional safety margins aimed at protecting children. It is not a government standard and sits far below the regulatory limits — included here as a conservative point of comparison.
Daily limit (fixed, not scaled to body weight)
Source: EWG
Pesticides
A pesticide screen flags dozens of residues at once. Canopy compares each detected residue against its EFSA Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) and sums them into a single Hazard Index per product.
Pesticide Hazard Index (EFSA ADIs)
A pesticide screen can flag dozens of residues at once, which is impossible to read line by line. The Hazard Index collapses them into a single number: for each detected pesticide, the amount in a serving is divided by that chemical's EFSA Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) — its own health reference — to get a “hazard quotient,” and those quotients are added together. This is an established cumulative-exposure screening method, not an invented metric. The honest caveat is that it assumes dose-addition and is most rigorous for chemicals that share a biological mechanism, so it is presented as a comparative residue-burden index normalized to each chemical's own reference — not a prediction of combined health harm. Used this way it does exactly what's needed: it turns a ragged multi-pesticide result into one comparable number per product. ADIs come from EFSA's OpenFoodTox database; pesticides without a published ADI (and anything below the lab's detection limit) are not included, and a Hazard Index of 100% means the combined residue equals the summed ADI budget.
Source: EFSA OpenFoodTox
Per-pesticide ADIs
Source: EFSA OpenFoodTox
Canopy shows these limits as reference lines on test results. They are comparison benchmarks from different bodies asking different questions — not a determination that a product is safe or unsafe.