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Review
. 2024 Feb 26;13(5):714.
doi: 10.3390/foods13050714.

Review of the Terminology, Approaches, and Formulations Used in the Guidelines on Quantitative Risk Assessment of Chemical Hazards in Food

Eva Doménech  1 , Sebastián Martorell  2
Affiliations
Review

Review of the Terminology, Approaches, and Formulations Used in the Guidelines on Quantitative Risk Assessment of Chemical Hazards in Food

Eva Doménech et al. Foods. .

Abstract

This paper reviews the published terminology, mathematical models, and the possible approaches used to characterise the risk of foodborne chemical hazards, particularly pesticides, metals, mycotoxins, acrylamide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The results confirmed the wide variability of the nomenclature used, e.g., 28 different ways of referencing exposure, 13 of cancer risk, or 9 of slope factor. On the other hand, a total of 16 equations were identified to formulate all the risk characterisation parameters of interest. Therefore, the present study proposes a terminology and formulation for some risk characterisation parameters based on the guidelines of international organisations and the literature review. The mathematical model used for non-genotoxic hazards is a ratio in all cases. However, the authors used the probability of cancer or different ratios, such as the margin of exposure (MOE) for genotoxic hazards. For each effect studied per hazard, the non-genotoxic effect was mostly studied in pesticides (79.73%), the genotoxic effect was mostly studied in PAHs (71.15%), and both effects were mainly studied in metals (59.4%). The authors of the works reviewed generally opted for a deterministic approach, although most of those who assessed the risk for mycotoxins or the ratio and risk for acrylamide used the probabilistic approach.

Keywords: cancer risk; hazard index; hazard quotient; health risk; margin of exposure; safety margin.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Elements and main parameters of the quantitative risk assessment.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of the number of papers selected by year of publication and hazard using a deterministic or probabilistic approach to QRA.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Metrics and terminology used by more than 1% of the authors reviewed: (A) exposure; (B) risk characterisation for non-genotoxic hazards; (C) risk characterisation for genotoxic hazards calculating a margin; and (D) calculating the risk.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Percentage of studies considering the MOA per hazard, i.e., genotoxic, non-genotoxic, or the authors reviewed studied both effects.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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