In 2002, ExpoFacts started as a two years project funded by CEFIC-LRI to create a European database of factors affecting exposure to environmental contaminants. The aim was to create a public access data source, similar to U.S. EPA Exposure Factors Sourcebook, which has been widely used by European researchers, but with European data.
When the project was started in 2002, European exposure factor data were scattered within numerous national and international institutions. ExpoFacts has created no new data, but instead compiled the existing data into one Internet database, where it can be easily to found, screened and downloaded from.
Data were collected from the EU countries, candidate countries to EU, and EFTA countries (except Liechtenstein). As a result, the ExpoFacts database contains data from 31 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
In addition to the population time use patterns and exposure route information, e.g. dietary statistics, the database contains socio-demographic and physiologic information to enable database use as a tool for population wide exposure modelling and risk assessment.
The ExpoFacts project was funded in 2002-2006 by CEFIC - LRI contract No NMALRI-C1.5KTL-0207. Since January 15th 2007, it is hosted by the Chemical Assessment and Testing Unit (former Physical and Chemical Exposure Unit) at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra.