**4. Conclusion**

Further to the increasing number of reports about phycotoxin-induced intoxications and deaths, these compounds have become a matter of concern for human health. But, phycotoxin exposure assessments are almost non-existent because related data about consumption and contamination are missing. This led us to study, in the same geographical area, shellfish consumption by humans and shellfish contamination by phycotoxins to assess exposure of humans to these compounds. The acute- and chronicexposure assessments made a probabilistic approach showed that: i) in terms of acute risk, OAs appear to be a cause for concern about high consumers in cases of high contamination levels that may exceed the OA ARfD. For instance, a high and bantransgressing consumer could be exposed to an OA acute intake up to 9-fold the ARfD; ii) about chronic risk, the finding of daily OA intakes close to the ARfD, known to be, by definition, much greater than the TDI, suggests that, among the phycotoxins under study, OA is the one to be considered. Moreover, it should be noted that bivalves contain regularly SPX at low concentrations. Chronic and subchronic data on SPX are missing, but in case of (sub)chronic toxicity, SPX exposure should be taken into consideration.

These phycotoxin-exposure assessments were aimed at making a first realistic evaluation of human exposure to phycotoxins. Their interest stands in the facts that: i) they were based on consumption- and contamination-data in the same subpopulation and area, ii) the recreational shellfish harvesters under study constitute an at-risk subpopulation iii) interspecies variability in contamination and consumption data was taken into account, iv) the impact of cooking process on phycotoxin levels was also considered.

To gain more comprehensive insight into this health issue, in the future, it would be worth: i) increasing the number of shellfish species to be investigated, ii) considering the contamination data relative to recorded cases of intoxication further to ingestion of fish and crustaceans, iii) extending the contamination database to several years and iv) studying coexposure to several phycotoxins.
