A practical example of risk assessment of phycotoxins due to shellfish consumption is put forward, following a standard framework, with a particular focus on exposure assessment. This enabled us to characterize risk and identify data insufficiencies for a full risk assessment. The first part explains the risk assessment paradigm. The second and the third parts provide general and toxicological data on phycotoxins (hazard identification and hazard characterization). The third part describes the conducted exposure assessment (results of shellfish -contamination and -consumption data in our studies). Lastly, in the fourth part, both acute and chronic risks of phycotoxin exposure are characterized according to these results.