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. 2022 Aug 4;10(8):451.
doi: 10.3390/toxics10080451.

A Tiered Approach for Assessing Individual and Combined Risk of Pyrethroids Using Human Biomonitoring Data

Jose V Tarazona  1   2 , Irene Cattaneo  1 , Lars Niemann  3 , Susana Pedraza-Diaz  2 , Maria Carmen González-Caballero  2 , Mercedes de Alba-Gonzalez  2 , Ana Cañas  2 , Noelia Dominguez-Morueco  2 , Marta Esteban-López  2 , Argelia Castaño  2 , Teresa Borges  4 , Andromachi Katsonouri  5 , Konstantinos C Makris  6 , Ilse Ottenbros  7 , Hans Mol  8 , Annelies De Decker  9 , Bert Morrens  10 , Tamar Berman  11 , Zohar Barnett-Itzhaki  12 , Nicole Probst-Hensch  13 , Samuel Fuhrimann  13 , Janja Snoj Tratnik  14 , Milena Horvat  14 , Loic Rambaud  15 , Margaux Riou  15 , Greet Schoeters  16 , Eva Govarts  16 , Marike Kolossa-Gehring  17 , Till Weber  17 , Petra Apel  17 , Sonia Namorado  18 , Tiina Santonen  19
Affiliations

A Tiered Approach for Assessing Individual and Combined Risk of Pyrethroids Using Human Biomonitoring Data

Jose V Tarazona et al. Toxics. .

Abstract

Pyrethroids are a major insecticide class, suitable for biomonitoring in humans. Due to similarities in structure and metabolic pathways, urinary metabolites are common to various active substances. A tiered approach is proposed for risk assessment. Tier I was a conservative screening for overall pyrethroid exposure, based on phenoxybenzoic acid metabolites. Subsequently, probabilistic approaches and more specific metabolites were used for refining the risk estimates. Exposure was based on 95th percentiles from HBM4EU aligned studies (2014-2021) covering children in Belgium, Cyprus, France, Israel, Slovenia, and The Netherlands and adults in France, Germany, Israel, and Switzerland. In all children populations, the 95th percentiles for 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA) exceeded the screening value. The probabilistic refinement quantified the risk level of the most exposed population (Belgium) at 2% or between 1-0.1% depending on the assumptions. In the substance specific assessments, the 95th percentiles of urinary concentrations in the aligned studies were well below the respective human biomonitoring guidance values (HBM-GVs). Both information sets were combined for refining the combined risk. Overall, the HBM data suggest a low health concern, at population level, related to pyrethroid exposure for the populations covered by the studies, even though a potential risk for highly exposed children cannot be completely excluded. The proposed tiered approach, including a screening step and several refinement options, seems to be a promising tool of scientific and regulatory value in future.

Keywords: HBM4EU; biocides; combined pyrethroid risk assessment; guidance values; human biomonitoring; pesticides; pyrethroids; screening assessment; tiered approach; veterinary drugs.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. Jose Tarazona is on leave on personal grounds from his position as Research Professor at the Spanish National Centre for Environmental Health and employed as staff scientist by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Irene Cattaneo is a trainee at EFSA. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official position of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). EFSA assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conceptual model for the proposed tiered biomonitoring pyrethroid risk assessment approach.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cumulative probability distribution of the 3-PBA HBM screening value for the general population, accounting for the variability in human toxicokinetics.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Probabilistic Monte Carlo-based estimation of RCR values for the Belgium children data.
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