What Can Epidemiological Studies Tell Us about the Impact of Chemical Mixtures on Human Health?

Conclusions By defining the types of research questions related to chemical mixtures that epidemiological studies can address, we hope to identify the gaps in our knowledge and develop or apply appropriate statistical methods that accurately quantify the impact of chemical mixtures on human health. In this article, we have chosen to focus on environmental chemicals, but the three questions we describe naturally extend to other environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution and infectious agents), as well as the broader exposome (e.g., stress and nutrition) (Wild 2005). By examining chemical mixtures, instead of one chemical at a time, we may identify risk factors for diseases with environmental origins and develop more targeted public health interventions. References Axelrad DA, Goodman S, Woodruff TJ. 2009. PCB body burdens in U.S. women of childbearing age 2001–2002: an evaluation of alternate summary metrics of NHANES data. Environ Res 109(4):368–378. Billionnet C, Sherrill D, Annesi-Maesano I. 2012. Estimating the health effects of exposure to multi-pollutant mixture. Ann Epidemiol 22(2):126–141. Bobb JF, Valeri L, Claus Henn B, Christiani DC, Wright RO, Mazumdar M, et al. 2015. Bayesian kernel machine regression for estimating the health effects of multi-pollutant mixtures. Biostatistics 16(3):493–508. Braun JM, Kalkbrenner AE, Just AC, Yolton K, Calafat AM, Sjödin A, et al. 2014. Gestational exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and reciprocal social, repet...
Source: EHP Research - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Brief Communication January 2016 Source Type: research