Cumulative dietary risk assessment of pesticides in food for the Danish population for the period 2012-2017

Abstract

The cumulative chronic dietary exposure for the Danish population were assessed using Danish food monitoring data for the period 2012-2017 and Danish food consumption data for the consumer groups children (age 1-2, age 4-6 and age 7-14 years), adults age 15-75, high consumers and consumers eating Danish produced fruit and vegetables whenever possible. Levels below the Limit of Reporting (LOR) were set to ½ LOR with correction. For risk assessment of the cumulative chronic dietary exposure we used the Hazard Index (HI) method where the Hazard Quotient (HQ) was calculated for each pesticide and summed up to a HI. The HI was calculated to be below 1 for all consumer groups; i.e. 0.36 for children age 4-6 years and 0.13 for adults, indicating that the cumulative chronic dietary pesticide exposure is unlikely to constitute a health risk for Danish consumers, even for high consumers eating 600 g or more of fruit and vegetables each day. By eating Danish produced commodities whenever possible, the HI was reduced by a factor of one third for both children and adults. 25 different commodities contributed to about 90% of the HI and to 84% of the exposure.

Keywords: Commodities contributing most to exposure and Hazard Index; Cumulative chronic risk assessment; Handling of left-censored data; Hazard Index method; Pesticides residues.