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Improving Public Health through Innovations in Exposure Science
Citation:
Tan, C. Improving Public Health through Innovations in Exposure Science. Socieity of Toxicology Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, March 12 - 16, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation is an overview of a workshop will be held at the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting in 2017. This workshop will introduce several innovations in exposure science and discuss how these new resources and data generated from these new tools can transform the role of exposure science in risk assessment.
Description:
In the traditional risk assessment paradigm, exposure science is relegated to a supporting role, providing an exposure estimate for comparison with hazard-based guidance values to determine whether there may be an unacceptable risk to public health. More recently, exposure science has transformed into a distinct discipline that complements toxicology as a means to understand the relationship between exposures to chemical mixtures and multiple health effects. This transformation is driven by advances in, for example, analytical methods, biomarker discovery, computational capabilities and algorithms, remote and on-person sensors, and geographic information systems. These major innovations in exposure science provide novel data streams that can revolutionize toxicity testing strategies and conventional risk assessment. For example, large numbers of chemicals are being detected at ever-lower concentrations in environmental and biological samples, providing relevant exposure information to be integrated into toxicity testing strategies. Novel biomarkers are being developed to expand our understanding of exposures, early biological effects, and susceptibility, and to allow for the exploration of contributions from both chemical and non-chemical stressors to adverse health outcomes. This workshop will introduce numerous innovative tools to enable better characterization of human exposures to mixtures of chemicals, including 1) a non-targeted approach to identify chemical signatures in house dust, 2) a laser ablation method for reconstructing early life-stage exposures to chemicals and essential nutrients using deciduous teeth, 3) the use of low-cost air sensors to collect air pollutant data for individuals, and 4) a biomonitoring study to examine the potential role of various estrogens in disruption of normal endocrine functions in pregnant women. In addition to exposure characterization, these studies integrate exposure data with hazard information obtained from in vitro toxicity screening assays and/or disease outcomes found in epidemiologic studies to provide insight into the complex relationship between multiple exposures and multiple health outcomes. The last presentation will introduce a framework for organizing data and information emerging from exposure science research, along with tools to further the application of systems-based approaches for improving public health. Following the presentations, there will be a 20 minute open discussion among workshop presenters and attendees to explore strategies to raise awareness in the conventional toxicology community of these innovative exposure-based approaches. The overarching goal of this workshop is to initiate discussions about the utility of these novel approaches in exposure science, together with advancements in toxicity testing strategies, in order to improve public health assessment.
