Individual consumption studies provide data at the individual consumer level. These surveys can be retrospective, prospective, or a combination of both. The most commonly used surveys are retrospective food recall studies or prospective food record studies. Individual consumption surveys obtain diaries from a population-based probability sample of respondents who report detailed information of their food consumption by type. Food consumption databases are available through various government agencies and international organizations. Utilization of consumption databases is useful when it is not possible or not desired to generate new consumption data for an assessment. Choosing the appropriate database is important in order to accurately assess the consumption of the target population being evaluated. The USDA Food Availability Data System is one of the primary databases tracking consumption in the United States. The data in this database reflects the amount of food available for human consumption in the United States and is the only source of time series data on U.S. food availability in the country. This database takes regularly consumed foods and aggregates them into approximately 800 core foods with similar raw agricultural commodities. Converting these regularly consumed foods into raw agricultural commodities allows for easier cross referencing with chemical residue databases. The World Health Organization implements the Global Environment Monitoring System – Food Contamination Monitoring and Assessment Program, or GEMS/FOOD which informs governments, institutions and the public on levels and trends of contaminants in food, their contribution to total human health exposure and the significance with regard to public health. Data includes per capita food consumption with diets based on the per capita data compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization which provides statistics on a country’s annual food production, imports and exports found in the FAOSTAT database. This database also includes individual food consumption data based on national surveys and a database of the level of chemicals in raw food commodities as well as in food as consumed by final consumer. In order to quantify the level of dietary exposure to a chemical residue, the level of the residue of interest within a particular food of interest or the whole food supply must be estimated. It is important to understand that each source of chemical residue data has a unique bias or limitation such as geographical limitation, limited number of commodities, analytical method limitations or sample size limitations. There is an extensive range of the types of residues evaluated in dietary exposure assessment. These include naturally occurring chemicals, intentionally applied chemicals, and inadvertently applied chemicals. Some examples of chemicals include pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides or other chemicals used for agricultural purposes. These chemical residues may be found as a result of intentional application or from inadvertent application when wind or water carries them away from the source of application.