The United States without a doubt has the world's most abundant and safe food supply, The plenty which graces American dinner tables is the envy most of the world. This largess is made possible by fertile soil and modem agricultural practices which have included the use of pesticides. Unfortunately, this largess is not without its price. Real or perceived questions of food safety as a result of the possible presence of pesticide residues foods have been posed with increasing vociferousness in recent years. In the ranking of the general public's concerns, adverse health effects as the result of pesticide residues in the diet ranks near the top. Yet, most scientific experts (1) rank food safety and pesticide residues, low on the list of concerns. More pressing and significant are health problems relate to food consumption patterns, i.e., amount and types of foods consumed, and food borne pathogenic microorganisms (2). It is not the purpose of this chapter to provide a detailed analysis of the mechanics of risk assessment as they related to food safety and pesticide residues. Others are more expert at the evaluation of potency and the rationales involved in various mathematical models. Rather the purpose of this paper is to discuss food safety and pesticide residues in general terms by examining the components of the risk assessment process and attempting to relate this analysis to some more general observations related to food safety. In the course of this analysis we will examine the individual technical elements, i.e., the analytical data on residues, food consumption information and the toxicological data which have played a role in the food safety debate. The evaluation of pesticide residues in food safety is based upon the estimation of potency of the residue and the estimation of the exposure. The exposure estimate is in turn derived from estimates of the level of the residue in various foods and the likely consumption of food containing those residues. Exposure estimates for people in occupational settings are fairly straight forward. Workers can be fitted with various kinds of monitors to determine their actual exposure or exposures can be fairly accurately estimated using environmental monitors. The relative success which researchers have had in predicting occupational diseases can be at least partially attributable to the ability to measure and/or predict exposure fairly accurately. In contrast dietary exposures are extremely difficult to estimate with accuracy. It is obviously impractical to monitor the daily diet of a sufficiently large population group to get details on portion sizes and foods eaten on an ongoing basis. It is even less feasible to analyze portions of the meal to obtain actual residue data on that diet.
