Dietary Exposure Assessments for Children in Europe – EXPOCHI

The overall objective of the project is to create a relational network of different individual food consumption databases in children, representative for diverse regions/countries within Europe, covering different geographical areas and to use those data for specific exposure assessment case studies in children. The specific objectives of the call are to provide individual food consumption data for children for different Member States, and to carry out an independent exposure assessment study in children for food colours, selenium, chromium and lead.

At present, there is no harmonised approach for the data collection of food consumption data in childhood populations. However, the data included in this project are representative at a national (or large regional) level: 14 regions covering 13 countries. Only data derived from 24-h dietary recalls and dietary records collected on at least two (non)consecutive days per individual are included in the project. EFSA provides the required occurrence data for the substances under study.
The outcome is estimated distribution of long term dietary exposure levels in the relevant population group, based statistical models for long term exposure, using the Monte Carlo Risk Assessment (MCRA) software, developed by RIKILT – Institute of Food Safety (The Netherlands).