Chronic dietary risk assessment of Mercury at FoodEx2

Mercury is a metal that is released into the environment from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Once released, mercury undergoes a series of complex transformations and cycles between atmosphere, ocean and land. The three chemical forms of mercury are (i) elemental or metallic mercury, (ii) inorganic mercury and (iii) organic mercury. Methylmercury is by far the most common form of organic mercury in the food chain. This study focuses only on the risks related to dietary total mercury exposure. In the current report the dietary exposure of the target population is studied using ImproRisk model v.0.3.2. The aim of this risk assessment study was to estimate the dietary mercury intake of the population in Cyprus, to compare this exposure estimate with the Tolerable Weekly Intake (TWI) of 4 μg/kg body weight (b.w.) per week and to calculate the contribution rate of the major food groups to the dietary mercury exposure.
Mean dietary Mercury exposure of the Cypriot population was calculated as 0.514 and 1.48 μg/kg b.w. per week for mean and high consumers, respectively. It was found that less than 1 % of the whole population was exposed over the TWI value of 4 μg/Kg b.w. per week. Much higher exposure was observed for infants, toddlers and other children due to their lower body weight and may be due to their consumption habits, especially in the cases with high fish consumption.
There was no significant difference in Mercury intake between genders and different geographical areas.
Fish (13.1%), pig meat (13.0%), cow milk (11.1%), canned fish (9.7%), and poultry meat (7.7%) were the food categories with the highest contribution to the Mercury intake.