Estimation of long-term dietary exposure to acrylamide of the Japanese people

ABSTRACT

Acrylamide is a probable human carcinogen and known human neurotoxin. This study estimated hypothetical long-term dietary exposure to acrylamide of the Japanese people using probabilistic and deterministic approaches by combining the concentration of acrylamide in foods with the amount and frequency of food consumption in the population. Data included acrylamide concentrations in more than 2400 individual food samples from a national survey and the literature from 2004 to 2013. Food consumption amounts were derived from the data of 24,293 Japanese citizens aged 1 year and older in the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Survey. Median lifetime average dietary exposure to acrylamide was estimated as 147–154 ng/kg body weight (bw)/day (95th percentile, 226–261 ng/kg bw/day). The deterministic estimate of lifetime exposure was 158 ng/kg bw/day and ranged from 119 ng/kg bw/day for the period of life after 60 years old to 409 ng/kg bw/day for the period between 1 and 6 years old. This study found that vegetables cooked at a high temperature, coffee and cooked potato were the major food groups contributing to long-term dietary acrylamide exposure of the Japanese people.

KEYWORDS:

• Acrylamide
• exposure assessment
• long-term exposure
• probabilistic modelling
• food

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Yukiko Yamada, Dr Takashi Kawamura, Dr Mitsuru Yoshida, Dr Akihiro Hirose, Dr Mari Asami and Dr Yuzo Mizukami, and Working Group on Acrylamide in Foods Generated through Heating of the Food Safety Commission of Japan for their fruitful discussions and technical advice on this study. We thank Dr Hidemi Takimoto for her kind instruction of the National Health and Nutrition Survey system. Also, we thank all the study staff for their support in the analysis of the dietary survey data. This study was supported by a research grant from the Food Safety Commission of Japan between 2015 and 2016 [Grant Number 1507]. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Food Safety Commission of Japan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Food Safety Commission of Japan: [Grant Number 1507].