Abstract
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) asked the Panel on Plant Protection Products and their
Residues to provide guidance on methodology for performing probabilistic dietary exposure
assessment of single or multiple active substances, as a potential additional tool to supplement or
complement the standard deterministic methodologies which are currently used in the EU for
conducting dietary exposure assessments for pesticides.
Specific guidance is provided for basic assessments but not for refined assessments, where specialised expertise is required to select methods appropriate to the assessment in hand.
The guidance includes probabilistic methods for quantifying some of the major sources of variability
and uncertainty affecting dietary exposure to pesticides. Other important sources of variability and
uncertainty might be quantified probabilistically in refined assessments but are addressed more simply in basic assessments by conducting alternative model runs with optimistic and pessimistic
assumptions.
Guidance is provided on problem formulation, including definition of appropriate scenarios for acute
and chronic exposure assessment in the differing contexts of approval of new substances, MRL
setting, authorisation of products, evaluation of residues found above the MRL, and annual reviews of
residue monitoring data.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2839 |
Number of pages | 95 |
Journal | EFSA Journal |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2012 |
Keywords
- consumer safety
- cumulative exposure assessment
- dietary exposure assessment
- enforcement
- monitoring
- MRL
- pesticide residues
- Probabilistic modelling