Dietary exposure and risk assessment to cadmium of the adult population of Jiangsu province, China: Comparing between semi-probabilistic and fully probabilistic approaches

ABSTRACT

With rapid industrialization and modernization in China, long-term dietary exposure to cadmium (Cd) has the potential to cause health risks. The traditional probabilistic approach for long-term dietary assessment was a semi-probabilistic method that had limitations in qualifying the variation in concentration data. Thus, this article estimated the long-term dietary exposure to Cd of the adults of Jiangsu province using semi-probabilistic and fully probabilistic approaches, and compared the two models. Cd concentration data were obtained from the national food contamination monitoring program 2001–2009. Food consumption data were gathered from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey conducted in 2002. The provisional tolerable daily intakes (PTDI) of 0.8 μg kg^–1 bw for Cd was applied in the risk assessment. The estimates of semi-probabilistic approach were within the provisional tolerable daily intakes (PTDI) at mean and all percentiles. However, the P95 of exposure with fully probabilistic approach for all population groups were above PTDI. Rice and rice products followed by wheat flour and wheat flour products, crustaceans, pak-choi, beans, and bean products contributed most to the Cd intake for adults. The fully probabilistic estimates could indicate a possible public health concern on Cd for adults in Jiangsu province.

KEYWORDS:

• cadmium
• risk assessment
• dietary exposure
• semi-probabilistic approach
• fully probabilistic approach

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of Jiangsu province for providing Cd contamination and food consumption data.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 81172769) and Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation for young scholars (Grant Number BK2012348).