Dietary exposure assessment of Danish consumers to dithiocarbamate residues in food: A comparison of the deterministic and probabilistic approach

Abstract

Probabilistic and deterministic estimates of the acute and chronic exposure of the Danish populations to dithiocarbamate residues were performed. The Monte Carlo Risk Assessment programme (MCRA 4.0) was used for the probabilistic risk assessment. Food consumption data were obtained from the nationwide dietary survey conducted in 2000–02. Residue data for 5721 samples from the monitoring programme conducted in the period 1998–2003 were used for dithiocarbamates, which had been determined as carbon disulphide. Contributions from 26 commodities were included in the calculations. Using the probabilistic approach, the daily acute intakes at the 99.9% percentile for adults and children were 11.2 and 28.2 μg kg⁻¹ body weight day⁻¹, representing 5.6% and 14.1% of the ARfD for maneb, respectively. When comparing the point estimate approach with the probabilistic approach, the outcome of the point estimate calculations was generally higher or comparable with the outcome of the probabilistic approach at the 99.9 percentile (consumers only). The chronic exposures for adults and children were 0.35 and 0.76 μg kg⁻¹ body weight day⁻¹ at the 99.9 percentile, representing 0.7% and 1.5%, respectively, of the acceptable daily intake for mancozeb and maneb at 50 μg kg⁻¹ body weight.

Keywords:

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

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Rikilt Institute, Wageningen, the Netherlands, for permission to use the Monte Carlo Risk Assessment program in their calculations.