Harmonization of exposure assessment for food chemicals: the international perspective.

The assessment of human exposure to chemicals present in the diet is a rapidly developing discipline. The formulation of the "risk analysis paradigm" by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1994 defined the exposure assessment as an essential step of the risk assessment process. This has re-enforced demands to those joint FAO/WHO scientific bodies who evaluate the safety of chemicals in foods to estimate routinely intakes for food additives, flavors, contaminants, and residues of pesticides and veterinary drugs as part of their safety assessments. The approaches chosen by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee for Food Additives (JECFA) and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) for these compounds are considerably different. These differences can only be understood when considering the different risk policies of the Codex Alimentarius Committees involved. Specific problems emerge if global intake assessments are requested; lack of representative regional data for consumption patterns and insufficient knowledge about levels of chemicals occurring in foods in many countries bear the risk that exposure assessments do not provide risk managers with a true global picture. There is a need to improve the collection and dissemination of such data.