Office of the Associate Director of Science, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Hazardous Materials Team, Office of Emergency Management, Office of the Associate Director, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Toxicol Sci. 2021 Dec 28;185(1):1-9. doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfab126.
Federal statutes authorize several agencies to protect human populations from chemical emergencies and provide guidance to evacuate, clean, and reoccupy affected areas. Each of the authorized federal agencies has developed programs to provide managers, public health officials, and regulators, with a rapid assessment of potential hazards and risks associated with chemical emergencies. Emergency responses vary based on exposure scenarios, routes, temporal considerations, and the substance(s) present. Traditional chemical assessments and derivation of toxicity values are time-intensive, typically requiring large amounts of human epidemiological and experimental animal data. When a rapid assessment of health effects is needed, an integrated computational approach of augmenting extant toxicity data with in vitro (new alternative toxicity testing methods) data can provide a quick, evidence-based solution. In so doing, multiple streams of data can be used, including literature searches, hazard, dose-response, physicochemical, environmental fate, transport property data, in vitro cell bioactivity testing, and toxicogenomics. The field of toxicology is moving, towards increased use of this approach as it transforms from observational to predictive science. The challenge is to objectively and transparently derive toxicity values using this approach to protect human health and the environment. Presented here are examples and efforts toward rapid risk assessment that demonstrate unified, parallel, and complementary work to provide timely protection in times of chemical emergency.
联邦法规授权多个机构保护人类免受化学紧急情况的影响，并提供指导以疏散、清理和重新占领受影响的地区。每个授权的联邦机构都制定了计划，为管理人员、公共卫生官员和监管机构提供了对与化学紧急情况相关的潜在危害和风险的快速评估。应急响应因暴露场景、途径、时间考虑因素和存在的物质而异。传统的化学评估和毒性值推导需要大量的人类流行病学和实验动物数据，因此时间密集。当需要快速评估健康影响时，用体外（新的替代毒性测试方法）数据增强现有毒性数据的综合计算方法可以提供快速、基于证据的解决方案。在这样做时，可以使用多数据流，包括文献检索、危害、剂量反应、物理化学、环境命运、传输特性数据、体外细胞生物活性测试和毒理学基因组学。毒理学领域正在朝着增加使用这种方法的方向发展，因为它正在从观察科学向预测科学转变。挑战是使用这种方法客观透明地推导毒性值，以保护人类健康和环境。这里介绍的是快速风险评估的示例和努力，这些示例和努力展示了在化学紧急情况下提供及时保护的统一、并行和互补工作。
