Methodology in neurotoxicology--activities within the World Health Organization and International Programme on Chemical Safety.

For many years, the potential deleterious effects of environmental factors on the human nervous system has been examined by several programmes within the World Health Organization (WHO). This presentation will concentrate on the development of methodology to determine the health risks from chemical exposures both in the work place, as well as, the general environment. IPCS as a scientifically based cooperative programme of the United Nations Environment Programme, International Labour Organisation, and WHO, has as one of its goals the development and use of methods to assess human health and environmental risks from chemicals. In this presentation, emphasis will be given to the development by IPCS of an integrated multidisciplinary approach for assessing the neurotoxic potential of chemicals and the risks to human health. The complexity of the nervous system and the variety of effects caused by chemicals will demand several tests in a multidisciplinary approach if the neurotoxic risk of any chemical is to be adequately characterized. Efforts by IPCS to evaluate the use of in vitro and neurobehavioural tests for screening purposes will be discussed as will the roles played by pathology, biochemistry, and neurophysiology in the characterization of neurotoxic risk. Finally, the WHO neurobehavioural core battery developed within the Occupational Health Programme will be described briefly.