Statistical methodology to evaluate food exposure to a contaminant and influence of sanitary limits: application to Ochratoxin A

This paper presents some statistical methodologies to evaluate the food exposure to a contaminant and quantify the outcome of a new maximum limit on a food item. Our application deals with Ochratoxin A (OTA). We focus on the quantitative evaluation of the distribution of exposure based on both consumption data and contamination data. One specific aspect of contamination data is left censorship due to the limits of detection. Three calculation procedures are proposed: [P1] a deterministic method using means of contamination; [P2] a probabilistic method using a parametric adjustment of the distributions of contamination taking into account the left censorship; and [P3] a non-parametric method which consists in randomly selecting the consumption data and the contamination values. Our main result shows that a non-parametric probabilistic approach is well adapted for the purpose of exposure assessment, when large samples are available. In the application to OTA, the probability to exceed a safe level is high, particularly for children. Simulations show that the impact of the existing standards on cereals and the currently proposed standards on wine generally do not significantly reduce the risk to be overexposed to OTA.