Exposure assessment of the Belgian population to pesticide residues through fruit and vegetable consumption

Abstract

Exposure of the Belgian consumer to pesticide residues from the consumption of fruit and vegetables was determined based on data collected in the Belgian food consumption survey performed by the Scientific Institute for Public Health and data from the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain 2005 monitoring programme. A first screening of pesticide residue exposure was performed by a deterministic approach. For most pesticide residues studied, the exposure was 100 times lower than the acceptable daily intake (ADI). However, for a high consumer (97.5th percentile of consumption) the intake could reach 23% of the ADI for imazalil, 15% for chlorpropham, 14% for the dithiocarbamates, 10% for dimethoate and lambda-cyhalothrin, and 9% for chlorpyriphos. Nevertheless, probabilistic exposure assessment performed on these pesticides in a second phase of the study indicated that, except for chlorpropham, the probability to exceed the ADI is much lower than 0.1%.

Keywords:

• exposure assessment
• probabilistic modelling
• pesticides
• fruit
• vegetables

Acknowledgements

Part of this work was financed under the framework of the Belgian Federal Programme on Reduction of Pesticides and Biocides. Professor W. Steurbaut (University of Gent), Professor B. Schiffers (FUSAGX, Gembloux) and Dr P. Delahaut (CER, Marloie) are acknowledged for their guidance of this study.