Chronic dietary exposure to nickel in the Italian population: a national risk assessment based on multi-year data from official control activities

Nickel (Ni) is a widespread environmental contaminant, with diet representing the main exposure route in the general population. Although dietary Ni exposure has been assessed in Italy, updated evaluations based on multi-year official-control data and food-category resolution remain limited. It was hypothesised that chronic dietary Ni exposure would differ across age groups and that some food categories would account for a substantial proportion of total exposure. Occurrence data from 4343 food samples collected during official controls between 2014 and 2025 were classified according to FoodEx2, aggregated under lower-, middle-, and upper-bound scenarios using the ImproRisk model, and combined with age-specific mean consumption estimates from the EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database. Chronic exposure was estimated for seven age groups and compared with the EFSA tolerable daily intake (TDI) of 13 μg kg−1 bw day−1. Because population-level mean consumption estimates may attenuate the contribution of high-Ni foods consumed by only a subset of the population, a complementary consumers-only analysis was performed for selected high-Ni food categories. The highest Ni concentrations occurred in cocoa ingredients, tea derivatives, chocolate products, aromatic herbs, cereal bran, clams, cockles and arkshells, and pulses. Exposure was highest in toddlers, followed by other children and infants, but remained below the TDI in all age groups. Dietary contributors varied with age, while consumers-only estimates revealed higher category-specific exposure for several high-Ni foods. Overall, this study provides an age- and food-category-resolved characterisation of dietary Ni exposure and supports the prioritisation of food categories for official monitoring and risk-management activities.