Documentation of the Food Consumption Files Used in the Tolerance Assessment System

摘要

The Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the responsibility for regulation of the application of pesticides to raw agricultural commodities (RACs). The decision as to whether or not to permit the use of a particular chemical is based, in part, upon exposure analyses that combine information about predicted residues in food with food consumption data to produce an estimate of exposure. The Tolerance Assessment System (TAS) is an automated system designed by Research Triangle Institute (RTI) to support OPP's decisionmaking process. The report describes the food consumption data files employed in the TAS exposure analyses. The Nationwide Food Consumption Survey of 1977-78, conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), was selected as the primary source of food consumption information. These data, which constituted a probability sample of U.S. households in the 48 contiguous states and which involved 3-day food consumption records for some 30,770 individuals, were used to compute daily food-form consumption estimates (adjusted for body weight) for a total of 87,668 person-days. Various aggregations and/or averages of these data were performed to create the seven analysis data files used in the TAS exposure analyses.