Profile

Plants and mushrooms contain various bioactive constituents that may exert both potential beneficial and potential toxic effects on human health.

I'm especially interested in the toxic effect of bioactive constituents. I advice the national food authorities (Danish Veterinary and Food Administration) on safety of natural toxins in plants and mushrooms used as food, in novel foods and on botanicals used as ingredients in food supplements. The evaluations on plants/botanicals used in food supplement have been published in the in the so-called Drogeliste. I have participated in various EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) working groups e.g. dealing with development of a guidance document for assessing the safety of botanicals used in food suplements and gathering information for a compendium on botanicals and their constituents with toxic effects.

My scientific background is in toxicology and quantitative pathology.

 

Other information

2007- Member of working groups on botanicals organised by EFSA. From 2007-2010 participant in an ILSI (International Life Science Institute) expert group on Evaluation of agronomic practices for mitigation of natural toxins. 2005- 2008 participant of work package (WP) 2.4 in EuroFIR, the European Food Information Research Databank system, funded by EU DG Research. WP 2.4. developed a database on critically assessed data on composition and biological effects of putative health promoting bioactive compounds in plant foods, and developed lists of plants used for foods in Europe e.g. the EuroFIR-NETTOX Plant list.

Research areas

Risk assessments of plants used in food supplements. Toxicological evaluation of natural inherent constituents of food plants and novel foods.