Using decomposed household food acquisitions as inputs of a Kinetic Dietary Exposure Model

Foods naturally contain a number of contaminants that may have different and long-term toxic effects. This paper introduces a novel approach for the assessment of such chronic food risk that integrates the pharmakokinetic properties of a given contaminant. The estimation of such a Kinetic Dietary Exposure Model (KDEM) should be based on long-term consumption data which, for the moment, can only be provided by Household Budget Surveys such as the TNS SECODIP panel in France. A semi-parametric model is proposed to decompose a series of household quantities into individual quantities which are then used as inputs of the KDEM. As an illustration, the risk assessment related to the presence of methylmercury in seafoods is revisited using this novel approach.