Dietary acrylamide exposure estimates for the United Kingdom and Ireland: comparison between semiprobabilistic and probabilistic exposure models.

Since the discovery of acrylamide in foods, there have been many calculations of dietary exposure. Total diet studies have been commonly used to estimate consumer exposure of acrylamide; however, these often fall short in evaluating true exposure levels because of limitations in small occurrence data sets. Dietary exposure to acrylamide can also be estimated by use of modeling packages. The U.K. Food Standards Agency and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland have prepared estimates for dietary acrylamide exposure using semiprobabilistic and probabilistic modeling. Occurrence data were obtained from the European Union acrylamide monitoring database, whereas consumption data were obtained from the relevant U.K. and Irish National Diet and Nutrition Surveys. The mean adult U.K. consumer exposure was estimated as 0.61 microg/kg of body weight (bw)/day and high-level adult consumer exposure (P97.5) as 1.29 microg/kg of bw/day. The mean adult Irish consumer exposure was estimated as 0.59 microg/kg of bw/day and the high-level adult consumer exposure (P97.5) as 1.75 microg/kg of bw/day. Owing to the wide range of acrylamide levels in foods, semiprobabilistic modeling does not always provide an accurate picture of dietary exposure levels and patterns. Therefore, a comparison of semiprobabilistic assessments to probabilistic assessments of U.K. and Irish dietary exposure estimates of certain food groups is provided.