Modelling aggregate exposure to pesticides from dietary and crop spray sources in UK residents

Abstract

Human exposure to pesticide mixtures can occur from the diet and other sources. Realistic exposure and risk assessments should include multiple sources and compounds and include the relative hazards of the different compounds. The EU-funded Euromix project is developing new web-based tools to facilitate these calculations. A case study is presented that exemplifies their use for a population of UK residents, including exposure from crop-spraying. A UK pesticide usage survey provided information on real pesticide combinations applied to crops of wheat, potatoes, sugar beet and dessert apples. This information was combined with outputs from two alternative simulation models of spray drift to estimate dermal, oral and inhalation exposures of residents. These non-dietary exposures were combined with dietary exposure estimates using the Monte Carlo Risk Assessment software to produce a distribution of aggregated and cumulative exposures. Compounds are weighted by relative potency to generate a measure of overall risk. Uncertainty quantification was also included in the distribution of exposures. These tools are flexible to allow diverse sources of exposure and can provide important information to decision-makers and help to prioritise testing of pesticide mixtures. Including non-dietary sources changed the prioritisation of pesticide mixtures, when compared to dietary exposure alone. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11356-019-04440-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Dose Addition in the Induction of Craniofacial Malformations in Zebrafish Embryos Exposed to a Complex Mixture of Food-Relevant Chemicals with Dissimilar Modes of Action

“…Dietary mixture exposures can be calculated from data from food and drinking water surveys, as was done in a case study in the EuroMix project, for pesticides with relevance to the CAG Steatosis, 53 eventually refined through modeling of aggregate exposure from nondietary sources in addition to dietary sources. 54 , 55 Another approach to estimate exposure is human biomonitoring, through analysis of CAG-specific contaminants and their metabolites in human biomaterial, particularly urine and blood. 56 , 57 , 58 Such information, combined with analysis of potential sources of the measured contaminants, can help to build and refine physiologically based pharmacokinetic models for estimating internal human exposure.…”

Feasibility study Open MCRA

“…e. Non-dietary exposure models (e.g. Kennedy et al, 2019 The present document has been produced and adopted by the bodies identified above as authors. In accordance with Article 36 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, this task has been carried out exclusively by the authors in the context of a grant agreement between the European Food Safety Authority and the authors.…”

“…Aggregated exposure models a. Aggregate or multiple route exposure model for single and multiple substances (Karrer et al, 2019b;Kennedy et al, 2019 b. Assessment group construction and membership model (Kennedy et al, 2020).…”