With the acceleration of industrialization and the rapid development of food processing technologies, the sources of chemical contaminants in food have become increasingly diverse, and exposure processes have become more concealed. Therefore, dietary risk assessment has become an important scientific approach for ensuring food safety and supporting risk management. This paper systematically reviewed the 4 basic steps of dietary risk assessment, namely hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment and risk characterization. In the exposure assessment stage, the application scope, advantages and limitations of point assessment, probabilistic assessment and biomarker analysis were compared in detail. In the risk characterization stage, the main quantitative evaluation indicators for carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks were further clarified. In addition, this paper summarized the sources of nine major categories of contaminants, including pesticide residues, toxic metals and processing-induced contaminants, as well as China’s current regulatory standards system. Finally, it analyzed existing problems in current research, such as the delayed updating of dietary consumption data and the insufficient application of probabilistic assessment and cumulative risk assessment. This review aims to provide a reference for improving the refinement of dietary risk assessment in China and enhancing food safety limit standards.

dietary risk assessment  /  exposure assessment  /  risk characterization  /  food safety