Methods for Using NHANES for Exposure Estimates

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a scheme of studies with the objective of measuring the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey is unique in that it has a clinical component (NCT00005154), and combines interviews and physical examinations into its data sets. NHANES is an important program of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). NCHS is a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and has the responsibility for producing vital and health statistics for the United States. Data from the NHANES studies can be used to produce exposure estimates of the population to foods, food ingredients, additives, dietary supplements, and in some years of the surveys, other items like allergens, prescription medications, endotoxins, cigarettes and alcohol. This paper is about methods for using NHANES to establish exposure estimates for food ingredients and additives. Sample Octave/Matlab code is provided, but other software can be used with the NHANES databases as well