Table 5.

Qualitative evaluation of influence of uncertainties on the dietary exposure estimate

Sources of uncertainties	Directiona
Consumption data: different methodologies/representativeness/underreporting/misreporting/no portion size standard	+/–
Use of data from food consumption surveys covering only a few days to estimate high percentiles (95th) long‐term (chronic) exposure	+
Correspondence of reported use levels and analytical data to the food items in the EFSA Comprehensive Database: uncertainties to which types of food the levels refer	+/–
Uncertainty in possible national differences in use levels of food categories	+/–
Concentration data: use levels considered applicable to all foods within the entire food category analytical data not fully representative of foods on the EU market (coming from 4 MSs) reliability of the data set	+ +/– –
Food categories selected for the exposure assessment: exclusion of food categories due to missing FoodEx linkage (n = 3) 20 food categories taken into account in the refined exposure assessment scenario	– +/–
Refined exposure assessment scenario: 3 FCs with levels coming from analytical data: use of middle‐bound (MB) LOD/LOQ values for left‐censored data exposure calculations based on the maximum or mean levels (reported use from industries or analytical data)	+/– +/–

MS: Member State; FC: food category; LOD: limit of detection; LOQ: limit of quantification.

^a+, uncertainty with potential to cause overestimation of exposure; –, uncertainty with potential to cause underestimation of exposure.