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Aggregate Exposure Pathway Workshop
Citation:
Gordon, A. Aggregate Exposure Pathway Workshop. AEP workshop, Durham, NC, May 09 - 10, 2016. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-17/357, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) hosted an Expert Workshop on the “Aggregate Exposure Pathway: A Conceptual Framework to Advance Exposure Science Research and Complete the Source-to-Outcome Continuum for Risk Assessment” on May 9-11, 2016 at the EPA in Research Triangle Park, NC. This workshop brought together participants from government, academia, and industry to address the following four focused topics: • Definitions, Applications, and Development of an AEP; • Infrastructure for Organizing Data and Information in an AEP; • Integration of AEP and AOP frameworks; and • Ecological and Human Health AEPs. This proceedings summarized the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Description:
Recognizing the growing demands for conducting rapid, cost-effective, and reliable exposure assessment on the thousands of chemicals in commerce, a committee convened by the National Research Council (NRC) developed its vision for exposure science in the 21st century. A necessary element of the evolved exposure science paradigm envisioned by the NRC committee is a predictive framework that has the ability to forecast exposures with improved accuracy. To realize this vision, the exposure science community should “adopt a systems-based approach that, to the extent possible, considers exposures from source to dose and dose to source and considers multiple levels of integration.” To enable such a “systems-based approach,” the concept of an “Aggregate Exposure Pathway” (AEP) has been proposed to organize data and information emerging from an invigorated and expanding field of exposure science. The AEP framework is a layered structure that describes the elements of an exposure pathway, as well as the relationship between those elements; it offers an intuitive approach to organize exposure information and sets the stage for forecasting exposure at an internal target site. The AEP is envisioned to be a natural and complementary companion in exposure science to the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) concept used in the toxicological sciences. The direct link between AEPs and AOPs will complete the source to outcome continuum to support more efficient integration of exposure science and toxicity testing information. Successful refinement of the AEP framework, however, requires continuing dialogue and collaboration amongst leaders in the exposure and toxicological sciences.