Probabilistic assessment of the cumulative dietary acute exposure of the population of Denmark to organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides

Organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides are acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting pesticides and as such have a common mode of action. We assessed the cumulative acute exposure of the population of Denmark to 25 organophosphorus and carbamate pesticide residues from the consumption of fruit, vegetables and cereals.

The probabilistic approach was used in the assessments. Residue data obtained from the Danish monitoring programme carried out in the period 2004-2007, which included 6704 samples of fruit, vegetables and cereals, were used in the calculations. Food consumption data were obtained from the nationwide dietary survey conducted in 2000-2002.

Contributions from 43 commodities were included in the calculations. We used the relative potency factor (RPF) approach to normalize the toxicity of the various organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides to the two index compounds chlorpyriphos and methamidophos. RPF values derived from the literature were used in the calculations.

We calculated the cumulative acute exposure to 1.8% and 0.8% of the acute reference dose (ARfD) of 100 mu g kg(-1) body weight (bw) day(-1) of chlorpyrifos as an index compound at the 99.9th percentile (P99.5) for children and adults, respectively. When we used methamidophos as the index compound, the cumulative acute intakes were calculated to 31.3% and 13.8% of the ARfD of 3 mu g kg(-1) bw day(-1) at P99.9 for children and adults, respectively.

With both index compounds, the greatest contributor to the cumulative acute exposure was apple. The results show that there is no cumulative acute risk for Danish consumers to acetylcholinesterase- inhibiting pesticides.