Exposure Assessment of Microbial Pathogens

Microbiological risk assessment has predominantly been applied in the context of food and water safety. In quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA), the exposure assessment aims to describe to what extent consumers are ingesting the identified microbiological hazard. This chapter describes an example of a food-pathway model for exposure assessment in order to illustrate how such a model can be built. It considers the exposure to Salmonella spp. through the consumption of meatballs made of pork, similar to the frikadeller that are popular in Denmark. Exposure assessment is predominantly applied with the QMRA framework, where it is integrated with a dose–response relation to perform a risk assessment. Although exposure alone cannot inform on the actual health impact of the exposure on the population, it is clear that a higher exposure (i.e. a higher frequency of exposure and being exposed to a larger number of pathogens) will lead to a higher risk.