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High‐Throughput Testing—The NRC Vision, The Challenge of Modeling Dynamic Changes in Biological Systems, and the Reality of Low‐Throughput Environmental Health Decision Making
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 29, Heft 4, S. 483-484
ISSN: 1539-6924
Pharmacokinetic Principles for Dose‐Rate Extrapolation of Carcinogenic Risk from Genetically Active Agents
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 10, Heft 2, S. 303-316
ISSN: 1539-6924
Neither experimental animal exposures nor real‐life human exposures are delivered at a constant level over a full lifetime. Although there are strong theoretical reasons why all pharmacokinetic processes must "go linear" at the limit of low dose rates, fluctuations in dose rate may produce nonlinearities that either increase or decrease actual risks relative to what would be expected for constant lifetime exposure. This paper discusses quantitative theory and specific examples for a number of processes that can be expected to give rise to pharmacokinetic nonlinearities at high dose rates–including transport processes (e.g., renal tubular secretion), activating and detoxifying metabolism, DNA repair, and enhancement of cell replication following gross toxicity in target tissues. At the extreme, full saturation of a detoxification or DNA repair process has the potential to create as much as a dose2 dependence of risk on dose delivered in a single burst, and if more than one detoxification step becomes fully saturated, this can be compounded. Effects via changes in cell replication rates, which appear likely to be largely responsible for the steep upward turning curve of formaldehyde carcinogenesis in rats, can be even more profound over a relatively narrow range of dosage. General suggestions are made for experimental methods to detect nonlinearities arising from the various sources in premarket screening programs.
Three Candidate "Laws" of Uncertainty Analysis1
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 11-11
ISSN: 1539-6924
The Promise of Molecular Epidemiology for Quantitative Risk Assessment
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 6, Heft 2, S. 181-193
ISSN: 1539-6924
In the long run, molecular epidemiological techniques (1) can provide important insights for understanding a wide variety of important issues in current risk assessment and (2) are applicable across a broad spectrum of adverse effects in addition to carcinogenesis. Unfortunately, current risk assessment practices make very little use of the kind of detailed mechanistic information that molecular epidemiology can provide. Eventually, there is reason to hope that the availability of mechanistic insights provided in part by molecular epidemiology can produce some of the "essential tension" required to reform paradigms for the formulation of quantitative risk assessment models in general.
Are Conundrums with Uncertainty Factors an Obstacle to Developing Probabilistic Interpretations of Noncancer Risks from Chemicals?
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 30, Heft 3, S. 340-345
ISSN: 1539-6924
Human Interindividual Variability–A Major Source of Uncertainty in Assessing Risks for Noncancer Health Effects
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 14, Heft 4, S. 421-431
ISSN: 1539-6924
For noncancer effects, the degree of human interindividual variability plays a central role in determining the risk that can be expected at low exposures. This discussion reviews available data on observations of interindividual variability in (a) breathing rates, based on observations in British coal miners; (b) systemic pharmacokinetic parameters, based on studies of a number of drugs; (c) susceptibility to neurological effects from fetal exposure to methyl mercury, based on observations of the incidence of effects in relation to hair mercury levels; and (d) chronic lung function changes in relation to long‐term exposure to cigarette smoke. The quantitative ranges of predictions that follow from uncertainties in estimates of interindividual variability in susceptibility are illustrated.
What Should Be the Implications of Uncertainty, Variability, and Inherent "Biases"/"Conservatism" for Risk Management Decision‐Making?1
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 19, Heft 1, S. 95-107
ISSN: 1539-6924
This paper is a challenge from a pair of lifelong technical specialists in risk assessment for the risk‐management community to better define social decision criteria for risk acceptance vs. risk control in relation to the issues of variability and uncertainty. To stimulate discussion, we offer a variety of "straw man" proposals about where we think Variability and uncertainty are likely to matter for different types of social policy considerations in the context of a few different kinds of decisions. In particular, we draw on recent presentations of uncertainty and variability data that have been offered by EPA in the context of the consideration of revised ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act.
A. Uncertainty and Variability
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 19, Heft 1, S. 47-49
ISSN: 1539-6924
Assessment of Variability and Uncertainty Distributions for Practical Risk Analyses
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 14, Heft 5, S. 713-730
ISSN: 1539-6924
In recent years the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been challenged both externally and internally to move beyond its traditional conservative single‐point treatment of various input parameters in risk assessments. In the first section, we assess when more involved distribution‐based analyses might be indicated for such common types of risk assessment applications as baseline assessments of Superfund sites. Then in two subsequent sections, we give an overview with some case studies of technical analyses of (A) variability/heterogeneity and (B) uncertainty. By "inter‐individual variability" is meant the real variation among individuals in exposure‐producing behavior, in exposures, or some other parameter (such as differences among individual municipal solid waste incinerators in emissions). In contrast, "uncertainty" is a description of the imperfection in knowledge of the true value of a particular parameter or its real variability in an individual or a group. In general uncertainty is reducible by additional information‐gathering or analysis activities (better data, better models), whereas real variability will not change (although it may be more accurately known) as a result of better or more extensive measurements. The purpose of the rather long‐winded exposition of these two final sections is to show the differences between analyses of these two different things, both of which are described using the language of probability distributions.
Expected Values for Projected Cancer Risks from Putative Genetically Acting Agents1
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 11, Heft 3, S. 359-363
ISSN: 1539-6924
Uncertainties in Pharmacokinetic Modeling for Perchloroethylene: II. Comparison of Model Predictions with Data for a Variety of Different Parameters
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 13, Heft 6, S. 599-610
ISSN: 1539-6924
In this paper we compare expectations derived from 10 different human physiologically based pharmacokinetic models for perchloroethylene with data on absorption via inhalation, and concentrations in alveolar air and venous blood. Our most interesting finding is that essentially all of the models show a time pattern of departures of predictions of air and blood levels relative to experimental data that might be corrected by more sophisticated model structures incorporating either (a) heterogeneity of the fat compartment (with respect to either perfusion or partition coefficients or both) or (b) intertissue diffusion of perchloroethylene between the fat and muscle/VRG groups. Similar types of corrections have recently been proposed to reduce analogous anomalies in the fits of pharmacokinetic models to the data for several volatile anesthetics.(17‐20) A second finding is that models incorporating resting values for alveolar ventilation in the region of 5.4 L/min seemed to be most compatible with the most reliable set of perchloroethylene uptake data.
Human Variability in Susceptibility to Toxic Chemicals— A Preliminary Analysis of Pharmacokinetic Data from Normal Volunteers
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 7, Heft 4, S. 415-426
ISSN: 1539-6924
The tenfold "uncertainty" factor traditionally used to guard against human interindividual differences in susceptibility to toxicity is not based on human observations. To begin to build a basis for quantifying an important component of overall variability in susceptibility to toxicity, a data base has been constructed of individual measurements of key pharmacokinetic parameters for specific substances (mostly drugs) in groups of at least five healthy adults. 72 of the 101 data sets studied were positively skewed, indicating that the distributions are generally closer to expectations for log‐normal distributions than for normal distributions. Measurements of interindividual variability in elimination half‐lives, maximal blood concentrations, and AUC (area under the curve of blood concentration by time) have median values of log10 geometric standard deviations in the range of 0.11–0.145. For the median chemical, therefore, a tenfold difference in these pharmacokinetic parameters would correspond to 7–9 standard deviations in populations of normal healthy adults. For one relatively lipophilic chemical, however, interindividual variability in maximual blood concentration and AUC was 0.4—implying that a tenfold difference would correspond to only about 2.5 standard deviations for those parameters in the human population. The parameters studied to date are only components of overall susceptibility to toxic agents, and do not include contributions from variability in exposure‐ and response‐determining parameters. The current study also implicitly excludes most human interindividual variability from age and illness. When these other sources of variability are included in an overall analysis of variability in susceptibility, it is likely that a tenfold difference will correspond to fewer standard deviations in the overall population, and correspondingly greater numbers of people at risk of toxicity.
Uncertainties in Pharmacokinetic Modeling for Perchloroethylene. I. Comparison of Model Structure, Parameters, and Predictions for Low‐Dose Metabolism Rates for Models Derived by Different Authors
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 10, Heft 3, S. 449-458
ISSN: 1539-6924
In recent years physiologically based pharmacokinetic models have come to play an increasingly important role in risk assessment for carcinogens. The hope is that they can help open the black box between external exposure and carcinogenic effects to experimental observations, and improve both high‐dose to low‐dose and interspecies projections of risk. However, to date, there have been only relatively preliminary efforts to assess the uncertainties in current modeling results. In this paper we compare the physiologically based pharmacokinetic models (and model predictions of risk‐related overall metabolism) that have been produced by seven different sets of authors for perchloroethylene (tetrachloroethylene). The most striking conclusion from the data is that most of the differences in risk‐related model predictions are attributable to the choice of the data sets used for calibrating the metabolic parameters. Second, it is clear that the bottom‐line differences among the model predictions are appreciable. Overall, the ratios of low‐dose human to bioassay rodent metabolism spanned a 30‐fold range for the six available human/rat comparisons, and the seven predicted ratios of low‐dose human to bioassay mouse metabolism spanned a 13‐fold range. (The greater range for the rat/human comparison is attributable to a structural assumption by one author group of competing linear and saturable pathways, and their conclusion that the dangerous saturable pathway constitutes a minor fraction of metabolism in rats.) It is clear that there are a number of opportunities for modelers to make different choices of model structure, interpretive assumptions, and calibrating data in the process of constructing pharmacokinetic models for use in estimating "delivered" or "biologically effective" dose for carcinogenesis risk assessments. We believe that in presenting the results of such modeling studies, it is important for researchers to explore the results of alternative, reasonably likely approaches for interpreting the available data—and either show that any conclusions they make are relatively insensitive to particular interpretive choices, or to acknowledge the differences in conclusions that would result from plausible alternative views of the world.
Human Interindividual Variability in Susceptibility to Airborne Particles
In: Risk analysis: an international journal, Band 21, Heft 4, S. 585-600
ISSN: 1539-6924
Part of the explanation for the persistent epidemiological findings of associations between mortality and morbidity with relatively modest ambient exposures to airborne particles may be that some people are much more susceptible to particle‐induced responses than others. This study assembled a database of quantitative observations of interindividual variability in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic parameters likely to affect particle response. The pharmacodynamic responses studied included data drawn from epidemiologic studies of doses of methacholine, flour dust, and other agents that induce acute changes in lung function. In general, the amount of interindividual variability in several of these pharmacodynamic response parameters was greater than the variability in pharmacokinetic (breathing rate, deposition, and clearance) parameters. Quantitatively the results indicated that human interindividual variability of breathing rates and major pharmacokinetic parameters—total deposition and tracheobronchial clearance—were in the region of Log(GSD) = 0.1 to 0.2 (corresponding to geometric standard deviations of 10.1 – 10.2 or 1.26 – 1.58). Deposition to the deep lung (alveolar region) appeared to be somewhat more variable: Log(GSD) of about 0.3 (GSD of about 2). Among pharmacodynamic parameters, changes in FEV1 in response to ozone and metabisulfite (an agent that is said to act primarily on neural receptors in the lung) were in the region of Log(GSD) of 0.2 to 0.4. However, similar responses to methacholine, an agent that acts on smooth muscle, seemed to have still more variability (0.4 to somewhat over 1.0, depending on the type of population studied). Similarly high values were suggested for particulate allergens. Central estimates of this kind of variability, and the close correspondence of the data to lognormal distributions, indicate that 99.9th percentile individuals are likely to respond at doses that are 150 to 450‐fold less than would be needed in median individuals. It seems plausible that acute responses with this amount of variability could form part of the mechanistic basis for epidemiological observations of enhanced mortality in relation to ambient exposures to fine particles.