Cumulative probabilistic risk assessment of triazole pesticides in Belgium from 2011-2014

ABSTRACT

Pesticide residues in food can lead to harmful toxic effects when exposed. Some of these compounds have a common Mode of Action and thus elicit a similar biological response. This paper considers the triazoles, a class of widely used fungicides exhibiting the same short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) response in humans. We examined Belgian pesticide residue data from 2011–2014 and coupled these with the results of the Belgian food consumption survey of 2004. Cumulative probabilistic risk assessment was done using the Monte Carlo Risk Assessment 8.0 web application. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a guidance document that proposes both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for dietary exposure assessment. Other than those two, a third, more balanced, scenario was simulated and showed an exposure right in between the EFSA scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, the foods with the highest measured residues in the residue data contributed the most to the total health risk. In the balanced and pessimistic scenarios, the highest contribution to the total health risk was made by active ingredients with a high sampling rate and/or a high consumption rate. No significant trends were observed in the health risk through 2011 to 2014, and the exposure distribution showed no health risks for the extreme consumers, with one exception in 2012.

KEYWORDS:

• Food safety
• dietary exposure
• cumulative risk assessment
• triazoles
• plant protection products

Acknowledgments

We thank the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FAFSC) for the use of the monitoring data on the triazole residues.