*2.6. Human Health Noncarcinogenic Risk Assessment*

The risk to human health posed by the pesticides detected in honey and pollen samples was assessed using the Hazard Quotient and Hazard Index approach [20]. The hazard quotient (*HQ*, unitless) was evaluated for each pesticide in honey and pollen, considering the dietary exposure via honey and pollen consumption. The *HQ*s have been computed following Equations (1) and (2), as depicted below:

$$HQ = \frac{ADD}{ADI} \tag{1}$$

$$ADD = \mathbb{C} \times \frac{IR}{BW} \tag{2}$$

where: *ADD* is the average daily pesticide intake (μg·kg−1·d<sup>−</sup>1), *ADI* is the acceptable daily intake (or daily reference dose, <sup>μ</sup>g·kg−1·d−1) set by EFSA (peer review of pesticides risk assessment), *<sup>C</sup>* is the mean of pesticide concentration in honey and pollen (μg·kg−1), *IR* is the daily honey pollen consumption rate (kg·person−1·d−1), (honey: 0.005 [21]; pollen: 0.02 for children and 0.04 for adults [22,23]), and *BW* is mean body weight (70 kg for adults, and 15 kg for children).

The *ADI* of an active substance (related to hazard identification and characterization) is based on the assessment of accessible toxicological data and is defined after the establishment of the no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) and use of the appropriate assessment factor. If the *HQ* is ≤1, it indicates that no adverse effect is likely to occur (health-protective). If *HQ* is >1, then a high level of concern is indicated for chronic effect occurrence. The higher the *HQ*, the higher the concern for chronic toxic effects, highlighting the need for immediate risk management actions.

For the estimation of the total risk from the simultaneous exposure to the mixture of chemicals that might be present in the commodity, the hazard index approach (*HI*, unitless) was applied to approximate the overall risk of multiple pesticides. In the specific approach, the hypothesis of dose additivity was assumed and calculated as the summation of individual *HQ* values (Equation (3)):

$$HI = \Sigma H \text{Qs} = HQ1 + HQ2 + HQ3 + \dots + HQn\tag{3}$$
