Study on food risk assessment of pesticide residues in bee pollen

This study applies the methodology of the food risk assessment to the pollen contamination by pesticide residues processing data collected from long-term monitoring conducted in Italy and Europe. The contamination of pollen by pesticide residues can take place with different schemes: contamination of the flowers from which the pollen originates; contamination of the foraging bees during the flights in the surrounding territory of the beehive (flight range of about 3 kilometres); use of active substances in therapeutic or preventive treatments of bee’s parasitic diseases (e.g. acaricidal treatments targeted at Varroa destructor). The fungicide are the category of active substances more involved in the contamination of pollen (47,9%), followed only by insecticides (23,9%). The evaluation of the food risk exposure has revealed a prevalence of insecticides. Chlorpyrifos represents the active substance with the higher exposure to the chronic risk while Chlorfenvinphos represents the active substance with the higher exposure to the acute risk. The underlined values of risk indicate that, considering the intrinsic toxicity of the involved substances, the content of the detected residues and the amount of daily intake of bee pollen, although the exposure to contamination was widespread, the food risk related to the consumption of bee pollen is relatively small. Between the two categories of potential consumers (adults and children), children have shown to present reduced safety margins. The applied assessment model proves to be essential in defining the food safety objectives, the priorities in the prevention management to be given to the operators of this food sector as well as objectives and methods to implement specific official control programmes for the competent authorities.