Calculations of dietary exposure to acrylamide

Abstract

In this paper we calculated the usual and acute exposure to acrylamide (AA) in the Dutch population and young children (1–6 years). For this AA levels of different food groups were used as collected by the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) of the European Commission's Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC) from April 2003 up to May 2004. This database contained about 3500 AA levels received from mainly Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Greece, Austria, UK and from food industry. Food consumption levels used were derived from the Dutch National Food Consumption Survey of 1997/1998 ( n = 6250 of which 530 children aged 1–6 years). The exposure was estimated using the probabilistic approach. The results of the exposure calculations are discussed in relation to different methodological aspects of AA exposure calculations and possible uncertainties related to this. The items discussed include quality of the AA levels measured in food items, the allocation of AA levels to food categories, the quality of food consumption levels, and relevant exposure model in relation to reported toxicity of AA. Furthermore, we demonstrate that scenario studies and probabilistic modelling of exposure are potential useful tools to evaluate the effect of processing techniques to reduce AA levels in food on AA exposure. The scenarios studied reduced total AA exposure ranging from <1% up to 17%.