What Are the Sources of Exposure to Eight Frequently Used Phthalic Acid Esters in Europeans?

Phthalic acid esters (phthalates) are used as plasticizers in numerous consumer products, commodities, and building materials. Consequently, phthalates are found in human residential and occupational environments in high concentrations, both in air and in dust. Phthalates are also ubiquitous food and environmental contaminants. An increasing number of studies sampling human urine reveal the ubiquitous phthalate exposure of consumers in industrialized countries. At the same time, recent toxicological studies have demonstrated the potential of the most important phthalates to disturb the human hormonal system and human sexual development and reproduction. Additionally, phthalates are suspected to trigger asthma and dermal diseases in children. To find the important sources of phthalates in Europeans, a scenario-based approach is applied here. Scenarios representing realistic exposure situations are generated to calculate the age-specific range in daily consumer exposure to eight phthalates. The scenarios demonstrate that exposure of infant and adult consumers is caused by different sources in many cases. Infant consumers experience significantly higher daily exposure to phthalates in relation to their body weight than older consumers. The use of consumer products and different indoor sources dominate the exposure to dimethyl, diethyl, benzylbutyl, diisononyl, and diisodecyl phthalates, whereas food has a major influence on the exposure to diisobutyl, dibutyl, and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalates. The scenario-based approach chosen in the present study provides a link between the knowledge on emission sources of phthalates and the concentrations of phthalate metabolites found in human urine.     

Effects of Context and Feelings on Perceptions of Genetically Modified Food

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the role of feelings in framing perceptions and decisions about risk, yet no study has specifically examined the impact of feelings on perceptions/judgments about biotechnology. This exploratory study investigated current perceptions of genetically modified (GM) food to examine (1) the effects of context (making judgments about GM food at the same time as rating other current areas of concern), and (2) the effect of feelings of dread (integral affect) and background feelings of stress (negative incidental affect) on risk judgments about GM food. An established psychometric method (semantic differential task) used with a sample of 126 adults (recruited "topic-blind," mostly from a student population) showed that, when rated in the context of other current concerns such as human cloning and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), there was less concern about GM food than might have been anticipated. Participants were recruited "topic-blind" in order to ensure that they were unaware that the focus of the research was on GM food specifically (and thus preventing biased recruitment to the study). Relative to 19 other current concerns GM food was "not dreaded," not viewed as "unethical," was judged as "controllable," and was seen as the least "risky" of all the issues studied. GM food was viewed as a "hot topic," a new risk, and as relatively unnatural (although it was not the highest rated concern on this scale). Ratings of risks across concerns by individuals experiencing high levels of negative incidental affect (stress) did not differ significantly from those reporting low stress.     

Consumer Evaluations of Food Risk Management Quality in Europe

In developing and implementing appropriate food risk management strategies, it is important to understand how consumers evaluate the quality of food risk management practices. The aim of this study is to model the underlying psychological factors influencing consumer evaluations of food risk management quality using structural equation modeling techniques (SEM), and to examine the extent to which the influence of these factors is country-specific (comparing respondents from Denmark, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom). A survey was developed to model the factors that drive consumer evaluations of food risk management practices and their relative importance (n= 2,533 total respondents). The measurement scales included in the structural model were configurally and metrically invariant across countries. Results show that some factors appear to drive perceptions of effective food risk management in all the countries studied, such as proactive consumer protection, which was positively related to consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality, while opaque and reactive risk management was negatively related to perceived food risk management quality. Other factors appeared to apply only in certain countries. For example, skepticism in risk assessment and communication practices was negatively related to food risk management quality, particularly so in the UK. Expertise of food risk managers appeared to be a key factor in consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality in some countries. However, trust in the honesty of food risk managers did not have a significant effect on food risk management quality. From the results, policy implications for food risk management are discussed and important directions for future research are identified.     

A Model of Consumers' Risk Perceptions Toward Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rbGH): The Impact of Risk Characteristics

This study estimates the effect risk characteristics, described as outrage factors by Hadden, have on consumers' risk perceptions toward the food-related biotechnology, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH). The outrage factors applicable to milk from rbGH treated herds are involuntary risk exposure, unfamiliarity with the product's production process, unnatural product characteristics, lack of trust in regulator's ability to protect consumers in the marketplace, and consumers' inability to distinguish milk from rbGH treated herds compared to milk from untreated herds. An empirical analysis of data from a national survey of household food shoppers reveals that outrage factors mediate risk perceptions. The results support the inclusion of outrage factors into the risk perception model for the rbGH product, as they add significantly to the explanatory power of the model and therefore reduce bias compared to a simpler model of attitudinal and demographic factors. The study indicates that outrage factors which have a significant impact on risk perceptions are the lack of trust in the FDA as a food-related information source, and perceiving no consumer benefits from farmers' use of rbGH. Communication strategies to reduce consumer risk perceptions therefore could utilize agencies perceived as more trustworthy and emphasize the benefits of rbGH use to consumers.     

Assessments of Direct Human Exposure—The Approach of EU Risk Assessments Compared to Scenario-Based Risk Assessment

The awareness of potential risks emerging from the use of chemicals in all parts of daily life has increased the need for risk assessments that are able to cover a high number of exposure situations and thereby ensure the safety of workers and consumers. In the European Union (EU), the practice of risk assessments for chemicals is laid down in a Technical Guidance Document; it is designed to consider environmental and human occupational and residential exposure. Almost 70 EU risk assessment reports (RARs) have been finalized for high-production-volume chemicals during the last decade. In the present study, we analyze the assessment of occupational and consumer exposure to trichloroethylene and phthalates presented in six EU RARs. Exposure scenarios in these six RARs were compared to scenarios used in applications of the scenario-based risk assessment approach to the same set of chemicals. We find that scenarios used in the selected EU RARs to represent typical exposure situations in occupational or private use of chemicals and products do not necessarily represent worst-case conditions. This can be due to the use of outdated information on technical equipment and conditions in workplaces or omission of pathways that can cause consumer exposure. Considering the need for exposure and risk assessments under the new chemicals legislation of the EU, we suggest that a transparent process of collecting data on exposure situations and of generating representative exposure scenarios is implemented to improve the accuracy of risk assessments. Also, the data sets used to assess human exposure should be harmonized, summarized in a transparent fashion, and made accessible for all risk assessors and the public.     

European Public Perceptions of Food Risk: Cross-National and Methodological Comparisons

This article presents a comparative study of public perceptions of food risk across 25 European member states. A secondary data analysis is conducted on a Eurobarometer survey fielded to nationally representative samples in 2005. The survey included closed questions as well as free associations to map risk perceptions. Taking a quantitative approach, we find that people in a majority of European countries express similar levels of concern about food risks. However, outside this majority a North-South divide is evident, with the Northern countries worrying less than the Southern countries. Multilevel modeling shows that cross-national differences in individual respondents' level of worry are in part attributable to shared country effects and to generalized risk sensitivity about a range of personal risks. On the underlying structure of food risk concerns, factor analysis points to three dimensions described by groupings of risks related to adulteration and contamination, health effects, and production and hygiene. A qualitative analysis of respondents' free associations about problems and risks with food identifies three major themes that are consistent with the quantitative results. However, the free associations also point toward greater cross-national diversity and to striking variations in the range and importance of food risks. Overall, the picture is of a public that frames food risks in a wider context of beliefs about the links between diet and health. We conclude with some implications for research on food risk perceptions in particular and risk perception studies in general.     

Perceived Risks of Conventional and Organic Produce: Pesticides, Pathogens, and Natural Toxins

Public risk perceptions and demand for safer food are important factors shaping agricultural production practices in the United States. Despite documented food safety concerns, little attempt has been made to elicit consumers' subjective risk judgments for a range of food safety hazards or to identify factors most predictive of perceived food safety risks. In this study, over 700 conventional and organic fresh produce buyers in the Boston area were surveyed for their perceived food safety risks. Survey results showed that consumers perceived relatively high risks associated with the consumption and production of conventionally grown produce compared with other public health hazards. For example, conventional and organic food buyers estimated the median annual fatality rate due to pesticide residues on conventionally grown food to be about 50 per million and 200 per million, respectively, which is similar in magnitude to the annual mortality risk from motor vehicle accidents in the United States. Over 90% of survey respondents also perceived a reduction in pesticide residue risk associated with substituting organically grown produce for conventionally grown produce, and nearly 50% perceived a risk reduction due to natural toxins and microbial pathogens. Multiple regression analyses indicate that only a few factors are consistently predictive of higher risk perceptions, including feelings of distrust toward regulatory agencies and the safety of the food supply. A variety of factors were found to be significant predictors of specific categories of food hazards, suggesting that consumers may view food safety risks as dissimilar from one another. Based on study findings, it is recommended that future agricultural policies and risk communication efforts utilize a comparative risk approach that targets a range of food safety hazards.     

Public Perceptions of the Potential Hazards Associated with Food Production and Food Consumption: An Empirical Study

Although public perceptions of food-related hazards receive much media comment and debate, the research literature on such perceptions is sparse and piecemeal. In the reported study, 216 people completed a questionnaire relating to their perceptions of the "risk characteristics" of potential hazards associated with various aspects of food production and food consumption. Responses were examined via principal-components analysis to obtain a structural representation of risk perception of the kind provided by Fischhoff, Slovic, and their colleagues in their seminal psychometric work.^(1,2) A three-component solution accounting for 87% of the variance was obtained, with the dimensions labeled as "severity,""unknown," and "number of people exposed." The findings also yielded information pointing to evidence of the phenomenon of unrealistic optimism. We conclude that our findings offer a useful base upon which further in-depth research integrating different perspectives on risk perception with respect to food-related hazards may be developed.     

“The Dose Makes the Poison”: Informing Consumers About the Scientific Risk Assessment of Food Additives

Intensive risk assessment is required before the approval of food additives. During this process, based on the toxicological principle of “the dose makes the poison,? maximum usage doses are assessed. However, most consumers are not aware of these efforts to ensure the safety of food additives and are therefore sceptical, even though food additives bring certain benefits to consumers. This study investigated the effect of a short video, which explains the scientific risk assessment and regulation of food additives, on consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of food additives. The primary goal of this study was to inform consumers and enable them to construct their own risk‐benefit assessment and make informed decisions about food additives. The secondary goal was to investigate whether people have different perceptions of food additives of artificial (i.e., aspartame) or natural origin (i.e., steviolglycoside). To attain these research goals, an online experiment was conducted on 185 Swiss consumers. Participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental group, which was shown a video about the scientific risk assessment of food additives, or the control group, which was shown a video about a topic irrelevant to the study. After watching the video, the respondents knew significantly more, expressed more positive thoughts and feelings, had less risk perception, and more acceptance than prior to watching the video. Thus, it appears that informing consumers about complex food safety topics, such as the scientific risk assessment of food additives, is possible, and using a carefully developed information video is a successful strategy for informing consumers.     

Assessing Risk‐Based Upper Limits of Melamine Migration from Food Containers

Melamine contamination of food has become a major food safety issue because of incidents of infant disease caused by exposure to this chemical. This study was aimed at establishing a safety limit in Taiwan for the degree of melamine migration from food containers. Health risk assessment was performed for three exposure groups (preschool children, individuals who dine out, and elderly residents of nursing homes). Selected values of tolerable daily intake (TDI) for melamine were used to calculate the reference migration concentration limit (RMCL) or reference specific migration limit (RSML) for melamine food containers. The only existing values of these limits for international standards today are 1.2 mg/L (0.2 mg/dm²) in China and 30 mg/L (5 mg/dm²) in the European Union. The factors used in the calculations included the specific surface area of food containers, daily food consumption rate, body weight, TDI, and the percentile of the population protected at a given migration concentration limit (MCL). The results indicate that children are indeed at higher risk of melamine exposure at toxic levels than are other groups and that the 95th percentile of MCL (specific surface area = 5) for children aged 1–6 years should be the RMCL (0.07 mg/dm²) for protecting the sensitive and general population.     

Forty Years of Food Safety Risk Assessment: A History and Analysis

Before the founding of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in 1980, food safety in the United States had long been a concern, but there was a lack of systematic methods to assess food-related risks. In 1906, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act to regulate food safety at the federal level. This Act followed the publication of multiple reports of food contamination, culminating in Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which highlighted food and worker abuses in the meatpacking industry. Later in the 20th century, important developments in agricultural and food technology greatly increased food production. But chemical exposures from agricultural and other practices resulted in major amendments to federal food laws, including the Delaney Clause, aimed specifically at cancer-causing chemicals. Later in the 20th century, when quantitative risk assessment methods were given greater scientific status in a seminal National Research Council report, food safety risk assessment became more systematized. Additionally, in these last 40 years, food safety research has resulted in increased understanding of a range of health effects from foodborne chemicals, and technological developments have improved U.S. food safety from farm to fork by offering new ways to manage risks. We discuss the history of food safety and the role risk analysis has played in its evolution, starting from over a century ago, but focusing on the last 40 years. While we focus on chemical risk assessment in the U.S., we also discuss microbial risk assessment and international food safety.     

Bayesian Stacked Parametric Survival with Frailty Components and Interval‐Censored Failure Times: An Application to Food Allergy Risk

To better understand the risk of exposure to food allergens, food challenge studies are designed to slowly increase the dose of an allergen delivered to allergic individuals until an objective reaction occurs. These dose‐to‐failure studies are used to determine acceptable intake levels and are analyzed using parametric failure time models. Though these models can provide estimates of the survival curve and risk, their parametric form may misrepresent the survival function for doses of interest. Different models that describe the data similarly may produce different dose‐to‐failure estimates. Motivated by predictive inference, we developed a Bayesian approach to combine survival estimates based on posterior predictive stacking, where the weights are formed to maximize posterior predictive accuracy. The approach defines a model space that is much larger than traditional parametric failure time modeling approaches. In our case, we use the approach to include random effects accounting for frailty components. The methodology is investigated in simulation, and is used to estimate allergic population eliciting doses for multiple food allergens.     

When Evolution Works Against the Future: Disgust's Contributions to the Acceptance of New Food Technologies

New food technologies have a high potential to transform the current resource‐consuming food system to a more efficient and sustainable one, but public acceptance of new food technologies is rather low. Such an avoidance might be maintained by a deeply preserved risk avoidance system called disgust. In an online survey, participants (N = 313) received information about a variety of new food technology applications (i.e., genetically modified meat/fish, edible nanotechnology coating film, nanotechnology food box, artificial meat/milk, and a synthetic food additive). Every new food technology application was rated according to the respondent's willingness to eat (WTE) it (i.e., acceptance), risk, benefit, and disgust perceptions. Furthermore, food disgust sensitivity was measured using the Food Disgust Scale. Overall, the WTE both gene‐technology applications and meat coated with an edible nanotechnology film were low and disgust responses toward all three applications were high. In full mediation models, food disgust sensitivity predicted the disgust response toward each new food technology application, which in turn influenced WTE them. Effects of disgust responses on the WTE a synthetic food additive were highest for and lowest for the edible nanotechnology coating film compared to the other technologies. Results indicate that direct disgust responses influence acceptance and risk and benefit perceptions of new food technologies. Beyond the discussion of this study, implications for future research and strategies to increase acceptance of new food technologies are discussed.     

Practice-Specific Risk Perceptions and Self-Reported Food Safety Practices

The relationship between risk perception and risk avoidance is typically analyzed using self-reported measures. However, in domains such as driving or food handling, the validity of responses about usual behavior is threatened because people think about the situations in which they are self-aware, such as when they encounter a hazard. Indeed, researchers have often noted a divergence between what people say about their behavior and how they actually behave. Thus, in order to draw conclusions about risk perceptions and risk avoidance from survey data, it is important to identify particular cognitive elements, such as those measured by questions about risk and safety knowledge, risk perceptions, or information search behavior, which may be effective antecedents of self-reported safety behavior. It is also important to identify and correct for potential sources of bias that may exist in the data. The authors analyze the Food and Drug Administration's 1998 Food Safety Survey to determine whether there are consistent cognitive antecedents for three types of safe food practices: preparation, eating, and cooling of foods. An assessment of measurement biases shows that endogeneity of food choices affects reports of food preparation. In addition, response bias affects reports of cooling practices as evidenced by its relation to knowledge and information search, a pattern of cognitive effects unique to cooling practices. After correcting for these biases, results show that practice-specific risk perceptions are the primary cognitive antecedents of safe food behavior, which has implications for the design of effective education messages about food safety.     

Socioeconomic Determinants of Health- and Food Safety-Related Risk Perceptions

Individual and societal perceptions of food-related health risks are multidimensional and complex. Social, political, psychological, and economic factors interact with technological factors and affect perceptions in complex ways. Previous research found that the significant determinants of risk perceptions include socioeconomic and behavioral variables. Most of these past results are based on two-way comparisons and factor analysis. The objective of this study was to analyze the significance of socioeconomic determinants of risk perceptions concerning health and food safety. A multivariate approach was used and the results were compared with earlier bivariate results to determine which socioeconomic predictors were robust across methods. There were two major findings in this study. The first was that the results in the multivariate models were generally consistent with earlier bivariate analysis. That is, variables such as household income, number of children, gender, age, and voting preferences were strong predictors of an individual's risk perceptions. The second result was that the gender of the respondent was the only variable found to be robust across all three classes of health and food safety issues across two time periods.     

Consumer Risk Perceptions Toward Agricultural Biotechnology, Self-Protection, and Food Demand: The Case of Milk in the United States

This study is an econometric systems approach to modeling the factors and linkages affecting risk perceptions toward agricultural biotechnology, self-protection actions, and food demand. This model is applied to milk in the United States, but it can be adapted to other products as well as other categories of risk perceptions. The contribution of this formulation is the ability to examine how explanatory factors influence risk perceptions and whether they translate into behavior and ultimately what impact this has on aggregate markets. Hadden's outrage factors on heightening risk perceptions are among the factors examined. In particular, the article examines the role of labeling as a means of permitting informed consent to mitigate outrage factors. The effects of attitudinal, economic, and demographic factors on risk perceptions are also explored, as well as the linkage between risk perceptions, consumer behavior, and food demand. Because risk perceptions and self-protection actions are categorical variables and demand is a continuous variable, the model is estimated as a two-stage mixed system with a covariance correction procedure suggested by Amemiya. The findings indicate that it is the availability of labeling, not the price difference, between that labeled milk and milk produced with recombinant bovine Somatotropin (rbST) that significantly affects consumer's selection of rbST-free milk. The results indicate that greater availability of labeled milk would not only significantly increase the proportion of consumers who purchased labeled milk, its availability would also reduce the perception of risk associated with rbST, whether consumers purchase it or not. In other words, availability of rbST-free milk translates into lower risk perceptions toward milk produced with rbST.     

Public Perceptions of Everyday Food Hazards: A Psychometric Study

In this paper, we discuss the conduct and results of a study aimed at eliciting public perceptions of food-related hazards. This study employs the psychometric approach of Paul Slovic and colleagues and aims to extend the recent work of Sparks and Shepherd⁽¹⁾ on defining the primary dimensions of food-related risk perceptions. The study surveyed a nationally representative sample of the general public (respondents = 293; adjusted response rate = 30.1%). Respondents provided ratings on subsets of 22 potential food hazards (e.g., food irradiation and presence of listeria) on a total of 19 risk characteristics (e.g., "perceived severity of risk" and "adequacy of governmental regulations"). In spite of the use of a number of new characteristics and food hazards, Principal Components Analysis revealed a broadly similar factor structure to that obtained by Sparks and Shepherd,⁽¹⁾ suggesting the generalizability of the key dimensions (concerning the severity and awareness of hazards). Interestingly, the positioning in the factor space of potential hazards about which little was generally known (e.g., campylobacter) as being serious and in need of regulation, may suggest a possible "starting position" in the perception of new hazards that have not previously been the subject of risk communications.     

Understanding Consumer Attitudes Toward Food Technologies in Canada

This article reports a study on consumer attitudes to 21 food and nonfood technologies in Canada. The study involves repertory grid interviews with 36 food consumers, the data from which are analyzed using generalized Procrustes analysis. Results highlight the role of perceived risk and perceived benefit in determining the acceptability of the technologies, with individual technologies lying along a continuum between the two. For technology as a whole and the 21 specific technologies, the perceived risk and perceived benefit constructs were the dominant determinants of consumer acceptability. While perceptions of perceived risk and perceived benefit differed between individual respondents, there were very limited consistent relations with a range of sociodemographic variables.     

Consumer Trust in Food Safety—A Multidisciplinary Approach and Empirical Evidence from Taiwan

Food scandals that happened in recent years have increased consumers' risk perceptions of foods and decreased their trust in food safety. A better understanding of the consumer trust in food safety can improve the effectiveness of public policy and allow the development of the best practice in risk communication. This study proposes a research framework from a psychometric approach to investigate the relationships between the consumer's trust in food safety and the antecedents of risk perceptions of foods based on a reflexive modernization perspective and a cultural theory perspective in the hope of benefiting the future empirical study. The empirical results from a structural equation modeling analysis of Taiwan as a case in point reveal that this research framework based on a multidisciplinary perspective can be a valuable tool for a growing understanding of consumer trust in food safety. The antecedents in the psychometric research framework comprised reflexive modernization factors and cultural theory factors have all been supported in this study except the consumer's perception of pessimism toward food. Moreover, the empirical results of repeated measures analysis of variance give more detailed information to grasp empirical implications and to provide some suggestions to the actors and institutions involved in the food supply chain in Taiwan.     

Consumer Responses to Integrated Risk‐Benefit Information Associated with the Consumption of Food

The risk analysis of the health impact of foods is increasingly focused on integrated risk‐benefit assessment, which will also need to be communicated to consumers. It therefore becomes important to understand how consumers respond to integrated risk‐benefit information. Quality‐adjusted‐life‐years (QALYs) is one measure that can be used to assess the balance between risks and benefits associated with a particular food. The effectiveness of QALYs for communicating both positive and negative health effects associated with food consumption to consumers was examined, using a 3 × 2 experiment varying information about health changes in terms of QALYs associated with the consumption of fish (n = 325). The effect of this information on consumer perceptions of the usefulness of QALYs for describing health effects, on risk and benefit perceptions, attitudes, and intentions to consume fish was examined. Results demonstrated that consumers perceived QALYs as useful for communicating health effects associated with food consumption. QALYs communicated as a net effect were preferred for food products associated with negative net effects on health, while separate communication of both risks and benefits may be preferred for food products associated with positive or zero net health effects. Information about health changes in terms of QALYs facilitated informed decision making by consumers, as indicated by the impact on risk and benefit perceptions as intended by the information. The impact of this information on actual food consumption choices merits further investigation.