Variability and uncertainty assessment of patulin exposure for preschool children in Flanders

Food Chem Toxicol. 2007 Sep;45(9):1745-51. doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2007.03.008. Epub 2007 Mar 19.

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the patulin exposure of children consuming organic, handcrafted or conventional apple juice through a probabilistic approach and to evaluate the effectiveness of several risk management options aiming to reduce the risk for children due to patulin exposure. However, a large part of the data on patulin contamination of apple juice fell under the limit of detection (LOD). Different methods were tested to deal with these so-called left censored data and a uniform distribution with uncertain bounds was selected to handle this censorship. Variability and uncertainty assessment of patulin exposure showed that 0.9% [90% confidence interval (CI): 0.3-1.8%] of the children consuming only organic apple juice exceed the tolerable daily intake (TDI). For consumers of conventional and handcrafted apple juice this was respectively 0.1% [90% CI: 0-0.3%] and 0% [90% CI: 0-0.2%]. Reduction of the patulin contamination in apple juice to concentrations below 25 microg/kg reduced the percentage of the children exceeding the TDI to 0% [90%CI: 0-0.2%] for organic apple juice. Reduction of the apple juice consumption was less effective than a reduction of the patulin concentration in apple juice and is only useful when the patulin concentration of apple juice is below 25 microg/kg.

MeSH terms

  • Agriculture / methods*
  • Belgium
  • Beverages / analysis*
  • Child, Preschool
  • Consumer Product Safety
  • Environmental Exposure
  • Female
  • Food Contamination / analysis*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Malus / chemistry*
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Mutagens / analysis*
  • Patulin / analysis*

Substances

  • Mutagens
  • Patulin