Glossary

ADI: Acceptable daily intake. The ADI is an estimate of the amount of a substance in food or drinking water that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without presenting an appreciable risk to health. It is usually expressed as milligrams of the substance per kilogram of body weight and day and applies to chemical substances such as food additives, pesticide residues and veterinary drugs.
AIC: Akaike Information Criterion.
AOP: Adverse Outcome Pathways. An AOP is a structured representation of biological events leading to adverse effects and is considered relevant to risk assessment.
ARfD: Acute reference dose. Estimate of the amount of a substance in food and/or drinking water, normally expressed on a body weight basis, that can be ingested in a period of 24 h or less without appreciable health risk to the consumer on the basis of all known facts at the time of the evaluation.
BBN: Beta binomial normal model.
BMD: Benchmark dose. A dose or concentration that produces a predetermined change in response rate of an adverse effect (called the benchmark response or BMR) compared to background.
BMDL: Benchmark dose lower confidence limit.
BMDU: Benchmark dose upper confidence limit.
BMR: Benchmark reponse.
BREAM: Bystander and resident exposure assessment model.
BROWSE: Bystanders, residents, operators and workers exposure models.
BW: Body weight.
CA: Concentration Addition. This model is based on a dilution principle, and was designed for chemicals with a similar mechanism of action.
CAG: Cumulative assessment group. A group of chemicals that could plausibly act by a common mode of action, not all of which will necessarily do so. Membership of a CAG can usually be refined (reduced) by application of successively higher tiers of assessment.
ConsExpo: Consumer exposure model.
CRA: Cumulative risk assessment: Risk assessment for combined exposure to two or more chemicals by all relevant pathways and routes.
DA: Dose addition. A process to establish the response of organisms to a mixture of chemicals with similar toxicity. This involves adding up their individual effects to predict the likely impact of the overall mixture.
FC: Focal commodity. A commodity for which an MRL is to be set or for which a high residue event has been monitored, and which is therefore the focus of an exposure assessment.
GAP: Good agricultural practice. GAP is a certification system for agriculture, specifying procedures (and attendant documentation) that must be implemented to create food for consumers or further processing that is safe and wholesome, using sustainable methods.
HBM: Human biomonitoring.
HBGV: Health based guidance value. HBGV is a science-based recommendation for the maximum (oral) 59 exposure to a substance that is not expected to result in an appreciable health risk, taking into account 60 current safety data, uncertainties in these data, and the likely duration of consumption.
HC: Hazard characterisations (HCs) is a generic term for any reference value for a substances at a chosen biological target level (external or internal) beyond which exposure is associated with potential adverse health effects. Hazard characterisations can be specified as external values (e.g., a human based guidance value, such as an ADI or ARfD) or are based on a point of departure (POD), such as BMDs from dose-response models or externally specified points of departure (NOAEL, LOAEL, MDS). The computation may involve assessment factors, e.g., for inter-species conversion, intra-species variation or additional sources of uncertainty. The calculation may also use kinetic models or absorption factors to convert external doses to internal doses or vice versa.
HI: The hazard index (HI) is the sum of all hazard quotiens (HQ) of the substances that are associated with the same potential adverse health effect.
HQ: The hazard quotient (HQ) is the ratio of the exposure to a substance and the reference level at which no adverse effects are expected (i.e., exposure divided by the reference level). A HQ smaller than 1 is associated with no expected adverse health effect and a HQ larger than 1 is associated with possible adverse health effects. The HQ is closely related to the MOE, which can be seen as the inverse metric.
HR: Highest residue. The HR is the highest residue level (expressed as mg/kg) in a composite sample of the edible portion of a food commodity when a pesticide has been used according to maximum GAP conditions. The HR is estimated as the highest of the residue values (one from each trial) from supervised trials conducted according to maximum GAP conditions, and includes residue components defined by the JMPR for estimation of dietary intake.
LNN: Logistic normal normal model.
LOAEL: Lowest observed adverse effect level.
LOD: Limit of detection. Lowest concentration of a pesticide residue in a defined matrix where positive identification can be achieved using a specified method (IUPAC, 2006).
LOQ: Limit of quantification. Lowest concentration of a pesticide residue in a defined matrix where positive identification and quantification measurement can be achieved using a specified analytical method (IUPAC, 2006).
LOR: Limit of reporting. Practical limit of residue quantification at or above the LOQ. The conservative limit of quantification for a defined matrix and method which may vary between laboratories or within the one laboratory from time to time because of different equipment, techniques, and reagents. Commonly either the lower limit of the calibrated range of the method or the lowest level at which quantitative recovery of the analyse has been demonstrated (IUPAC, 2006).
MCR: Maximum cumulative ratio.
MCRA: Monte Carlo Risk Assessment.
MIE: Molecular initiating event.
MoA: Mode of Action.
MOE: The margin of exposure (MOE) is the ratio between the reference level at which no adverse effects are expected to the exposure to a substance (i.e., reference level divided by exposure). Commonly, the reference level is assumed to be a point of departure (POD) based on animal studies that does not incorporate all factors to translate to a human reference value. A MOE is therefore typically compared to a uncertainty/safety factor (UF) composed of the product of the uncertainty factors. An MOE is smaller than the UF is associated with risk. A MOE larger than the UF is associated with no expected adverse health effects.
MRA: Mixture risk assessment.
MRL: Maximum residue level. Maximum concentration of a residue that is legally permitted or recognized as acceptable in,or on, a food, agricultural commodity, or animal feedstuff as set by Codex or a national regulatory authority(IUPAC, 2006).
NAMs: New approach methodologies. The term NAM has been emerged as a descriptive reference to any non-animal-based approaches that can be used to provide information in the context of chemical hazard and risk assessment
NOAEL: No observed adverse effect level.
NOEC: No observed effect concentration.
OIM: Observed Individual Means approach. An approach for estimating longer term exposures by taking each individual’s observed mean consumption over the duration of a dietary survey.
PBPK: Physiologically based pharmacokinetic/toxicokinetic models.
POCE: The probability of critical exposure (PoCE) is the proportion of the HI distribution above the threshold (or of the generalised MOE below the threshold) is the probability of critical exposure (PoCE) in the particular (sub)population. The threshold value can be 1 if all assessment factors have already been accounted for in the calculation of HI or MOE.
POD: A point of departure (POD) is defined as a point on a toxicological dose-response curve obtained from a dose dose-response experiment in the region at which the curve transitions from no effects to effects. It is used as the base value for deriving toxicological reference values, or hazard characterisations. Common PODs are the no-observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) and benchmark dose (BMD).
PPP: Plant protection products.
PRIMo: EFSA pesticide residue intake model.
QSAR: Quantitative structural activity relationship.
RAC: Raw agricultural commodity. Part of a crop used as a food or feed commodity directly from the harvested crop without processing.
RIVM: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgesondheid en Milieu (Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment). (Dutch) National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.
RPF: Relative potency factor. The ratio of the toxic potency of a given chemical to that of an index chemical in the Cumulative Assessment Group (CAG). Relative potency factors are used to convert exposures of all chemicals in the CAG into their exposure equivalents of the index chemical.
SSD: EFSA Standard sample description.
TDI: Tolerable daily intake.
TEF: Toxic equivalency factor.
TTC: Threshold of toxicological concern.