General Chemical State Laboratory, Chemical Service of Central Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Division Data, Statistics and Risk Assessment, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), Graz, Austria.
Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2021 Aug;38(8):1301-1315. doi: 10.1080/19440049.2021.1921282. Epub 2021 Jun 2.
Probabilistic exposure and risk assessment of chemical hazards in the diet have increasingly gained ground in recent years as a pragmatic approach for the approximation of reality. This work presents the outcomes of a project which aimed at applying probabilistic techniques for basic modelling of chronic dietary exposure to food contaminants following EFSA guidance. These techniques, based on Monte Carlo Risk Assessment (MCRA) software and on the programming language , were employed for the risk assessment of cadmium for Austrian adults, enabling the validation and the critical comparison of the two approaches. Harmonisation and optimisation of procedures, refinement of exposure assessment skills and confidence in the results were the main benefits. Data amount and validity were identified as critical parameters, influencing the precision of the results. Cadmium was selected as a case study due to its toxicological properties, its ubiquitous presence in food and the availability of Austrian occurrence data. Similar exposure and risk estimates were generated through MCRA and in alternative optimistic and pessimistic exposure scenarios, suggesting low levels of concern, except for vegetarians, whose upper tail exposures are close to the established Tolerable Weekly Intake. However, as occurrence data gaps have been identified as the major element of uncertainty, the estimated exposure and risk levels are characterised as underestimated. Grains and grain-based products, potatoes and leafy vegetables are the main contributors to the intake. The results will contribute to risk management and to a future refinement of the assessment.
近年来，作为一种接近现实的实用方法，膳食中化学危害的概率暴露和风险评估在医学领域越来越受到重视。本工作介绍了一个项目的结果，该项目旨在按照 EFSA 指南应用概率技术对食物污染物的慢性膳食暴露进行基本建模。这些技术基于蒙特卡罗风险评估 (MCRA) 软件和编程语言，用于对奥地利成年人进行镉的风险评估，从而实现了两种方法的验证和关键比较。协调和优化程序、提高暴露评估技能的准确性以及增强对结果的信心是主要的好处。数据量和有效性被确定为关键参数，影响结果的准确性。由于其毒理学特性、在食物中的普遍存在性以及奥地利出现数据的可用性，镉被选为案例研究。通过 MCRA 和替代的乐观和悲观暴露情景生成了类似的暴露和风险估计，表明风险水平较低，除了素食者，他们的暴露量接近规定的可耐受每周摄入量。然而，由于出现数据差距被确定为不确定性的主要因素，因此估计的暴露和风险水平被认为是低估的。谷物和谷物制品、土豆和叶类蔬菜是摄入量的主要来源。研究结果将有助于风险管理和未来评估的改进。
