Iavicoli I, Carelli G
Istituto di Medicina del Lavoro, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma.
G Ital Med Lav Ergon. 2003 Jul-Sep;25 Suppl(3):174-5.
Over the past few decades there has been a gradual decline in concentrations of airborne chemical agents in the workplace. This improvement in the workplace has led to a concomitant need to study the effects of low dose exposure in order to assess possible risks. The paradigm used in toxicology to evaluate risk and to establish exposure limits for substances employed in industry, is that the dose-response relationship is expressed by a linear model for carcinogenic substances and by a threshold model for those which are not. Alongside these two traditional models, there has been a recent proposal to describe relationships using hormesis which is characterised by a biphasic curve corresponding to moderate stimulation resulting from response to low doses, and by inhibition at high doses. Although hormesis has been widely observed in experimental contexts, it still has to be tested in occupational toxicology to determine the possibility of obtaining a more accurate evaluation of the risk of exposure to low doses present in the workplace.
在过去几十年里，工作场所空气中化学制剂的浓度呈逐渐下降趋势。工作场所的这种改善使得有必要同时研究低剂量暴露的影响，以便评估可能存在的风险。毒理学中用于评估风险和确定工业用物质暴露限值的范例是，对于致癌物质，剂量-反应关系用线性模型表示；对于非致癌物质，则用阈值模型表示。除了这两种传统模型外，最近有人提议用兴奋效应来描述剂量-反应关系，其特征是呈双相曲线，即低剂量时产生适度刺激，高剂量时产生抑制作用。尽管兴奋效应在实验环境中已被广泛观察到，但仍需在职业毒理学中进行验证，以确定能否更准确地评估工作场所低剂量暴露的风险。
