The interest for environmental issues and the concern resulting from the potential exposure to contaminants were the starting point to develop methodologies in order to evaluate the consequences that those might have over both the environment and human health. Considering the feature of POPs, including PBDEs, such as bioaccumulation, biomagnification, long-range transport and adverse effects even long time after exposure, risk assessment of POPs requires specific approaches and tools. In this particular context, the MERLIN-Expo tool was used to assess the aquatic environmental exposure of Adige River to PBDEs and the accumulation of PBDEs in humans through the consumption of possible contaminated local aquatic food.

The aquatic food web models provided as output of the deterministic simulation the time trend of concentrations for twenty years of BDE-47 and total PBDEs, expressed using the physico-chemical properties of BDE-47, in aquatic organisms of the food web of Adige River. For BDE-47, the highest accumulated concentrations were detected for two benthic species: Thymallus thymallus and Squalius cephalus whereas the lowest concentrations were obtained for the pelagic specie Salmo trutta marmoratus. The trend obtained for the total PBDEs, calculated using the physico-chemical properties of BDE-47, follows the one of BDE-47.

For human exposure, different BDE-47 and total PBDEs concentration trends between children, adolescent, adults and elderly were observed, probably correlated with the human intake of fish products in the daily diet and the ability to metabolize these contaminants. In detail, for the adolescents, adults and elderly a continuous accumulation of the target contaminants during the simulation's years was observed, whereas for children a plateau at the end of the simulation period was perceived.

对环境问题的关注以及可能暴露于污染物引起的关注是开发方法的起点，以便评估这些方法可能对环境和人类健康造成的后果。考虑到持久性有机污染物（包括多溴二苯醚）的特性，例如生物累积，生物放大，远距离运输以及即使暴露后很长时间也会产生不利影响，因此对持久性有机污染物的风险评估需要特定的方法和工具。在这种特定情况下，使用了MERLIN-Expo工具评估了阿迪杰河在水生环境中对多溴二苯醚的暴露程度以及通过食用可能受污染的当地水生食物在人体内多溴二苯醚的积累。

水生食物网模型作为确定性模拟的输出，提供了阿迪杰河食物网水生生物中BDE-47和总PBDEs浓度二十年的时间趋势，使用BDE-47的理化特性表示。 。对于BDE-47，在两个底栖物种：胸腺Thymallus和头角鲨Squalius cephalus中检测到最高累积浓度，而在浮游物种Salmo trutta marmoratus中则检测到最低浓度。使用BDE-47的理化性质计算得出的总PBDEs趋势遵循BDE-47的趋势。

对于人类接触，观察到儿童，青少年，成人和老年人之间不同的BDE-47和总PBDEs浓度趋势，可能与人类日常饮食中鱼产品的摄入量以及代谢这些污染物的能力有关。详细地，对于青少年，成年人和老年人，在模拟的年份中观察到目标污染物的连续积累，而对于儿童，在模拟期的末期则达到了平稳状态。