This paper reports an estimate of the dietary intake of lead by children and adults from the Jinhu area in South-eastern China. A duplicate diet approach was used to collect food samples in November and December 2007. The lead content was measured by furnace atomic absorption spectrometry. Median lead intakes for different groups were as follows: children: 1.65 microg(kg(bw))(-1) day(-1); and adults: 1.10 microg(kg(bw))(-1) day(-1). No exposure exceeded the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 25 microg(kg(bw))(-1) week(-1) proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, median and maximum exposure for the children group amounted to 60.8% and 97.2% of the PTWI, respectively, which were higher than those for adults, which were 40.5% and 86.4%, respectively. It was concluded that health risks due to dietary lead intake seem to be high in Jinhu.

Deterministic and probabilistic estimates of the chronic exposure to lead (Pb) for the inhabitants in Jiangsu Province, China, were performed. Pb contamination data were obtained from the national food contamination monitoring programme during 2001-2006 and 2600 samples from 38 commodities in Jiangsu were included. Food consumption data were from the national diet and nutrition survey conducted in 2002, including 3879 subjects aged 2-80 years and 185 children aged 2-6 years in Jiangsu. Contributions from 38 commodities were included in the calculations. Using the provisional tolerable weekly intakes (PTWI) divided into daily intakes (PTWI(d)) of 3.57 microg kg(-1) bw day(-1) in the risk assessment, exposures calculated by the deterministic approach for children and the general population were 77% and 43% of the PTWI(d), respectively, which were nearly similar to the mean intake calculation in the probabilistic approach. The percentage of people whose exposure level exceeded the PTWI(d) for children, the general population, urban population and rural population were 16%, 0.4%, 0.1%, and 0.5%, respectively. The 50th, 95th and 99th percentiles of Pb exposure for children were 2.6, 4.4 and 5.5 microg kg(-1) bw day(-1), respectively. Rice followed by wheat flour and bean products contributed most to the total Pb intake for both children and the general population. This study indicated that the Pb dietary exposure in Jiangsu Province, especially for children, would be a public health concern.

A probabilistic estimation of dietary exposure to cypermethrin residues for the Chinese population was performed. Cypermethrin residue data were obtained from the national food contamination monitoring program for 2001-2006, encompassing 14,096 samples from 36 commodities with a detection rate of 10.4%. Food consumption data were gathered from the national nutrition and health survey conducted in 2002, comprising 65,915 consumers aged 2-100 years and 3701 children of 2-6 years old. The whole country was roughly divided into six regions and the ranges of the median and of P99.9 exposure estimated for these regions were 0.018-0.026 and 3.131-7.095 µg kg(-1 )bw day(-1), respectively. Pak-choi and Chinese cabbage contributed 33.9 and 13.2%, respectively, to the cypermethrin intake for the general population, while pak-choi and citrus covered 30.7 and 22.5% of the total intake for children, respectively. The exposure of the rural population was higher than urban populations. Rural areas mainly located in the plains of central China had among the highest exposure of the six regions, accounting for 17.7% of the ARfD at P99.9, while the 99.99th percentile of exposure for children, especially rural children, far exceeded the ARfD, which is a cause for concern.

This paper compares the exposure for the Chinese populations and sub-groups to acephate, a widely applied organophosphorus pesticide, using deterministic and probabilistic approaches. Acephate residue data were obtained from the national food contamination monitoring program 2001-2006, collected by multi-stage stratified sampling and with a detection rate of 3.3%. Food consumption data were gathered from the national diet and nutrition survey conducted in 2002 over three consecutive days by the 24-h recall method, and included 22,563 families or 65,886 consumers aged 2-100 years. For point estimate, it was evident that exposures were higher than the acute reference dose (ARfD) in many cases. For the probabilistic approach, the P99.9 exposures for the general population and children accounted for 11.88 and 24.15% of the ARfD, respectively, in acute intake calculations and 52.86 and 68.75%, respectively, of the acceptable daily intake (ADI) in chronic intake calculations. The exposure level of rural people was higher than urban dwellers, and vegetables contributed most to acephate intake.