Dietary exposure assessment of European population to mycotoxins: a review

In the area of food, risk assessment consists of four elements: hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Exposure assessment and the other elements entail different sources of uncertainty and variability that can affect the reliability of the final output. Among the most relevant tools for exposure assessment studies, deterministic versus probabilistic, total diet versus duplicate studies, and food surveys versus the use of biomarkers in biological fluids constitute approaches most commonly used by researchers. In this chapter, the data available in the literature on assessment of the exposure of the European population to mycotoxins are shown. They reveal that specific groups such as infants and children are the most exposed because of an unfavorable ratio of intake to body weight. In addition, main pros and cons related to occurrence and consumption data are presented with particular emphasis on sampling error and the improper use or incomplete nature of both types of data.