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A prospective whole-mixture approach to assess risk of the food and chemical exposome

Nature Food volume 2, pages 463–468 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Many widely used chemicals result in ubiquitous human exposure from multiple sources, including diet. Legislation mainly deals with the toxicological evaluation of single substances owing to a methodological and conceptual lack of alternatives, and does so within defined silos subject to over 40 distinct regulations in the EU alone. Furthermore, much of the research and many of the initiatives concerned with the assessment and evaluation of chemical mixtures and their potential effects on human health rely on retrospective analysis. Here we propose an approach for the prospective identification, assessment and regulation of mixtures relevant to human health. We address two distinct aspects of toxicology—which chemicals actually do occur together, and how potential mixture-related health hazards can be predicted—with an adapted concept of the exposome and large-scale hazard screens. The proactive use of the likelihood of co-exposure, together with the new approach of methods-based testing, may be a timely and feasible way of identifying those substances and mixtures where hazards may have been overlooked and regulatory action is needed. Ideally, we would generate co-exposure patterns for specific consumer groups, depending on lifestyle and dietary habits, to assess the specific risk of identified mixtures.

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Fig. 1: Risk assessment approaches.
Fig. 2: Experimental regulatory toxicology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany

    T. Tralau, M. Oelgeschläger, J. Kugler, D. Bloch, A. Braeuning, T. Burgdorf, P. Marx-Stoelting, V. Ritz, S. Schmeisser, A. Trubiroha, S. Zellmer, A. Luch, G. Schönfelder, R. Solecki & A. Hensel

  2. Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany

    G. Schönfelder

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Contributions

J.K., M.O. and T.T. initially developed and drafted the concept. All authors contributed equally to the further conceptualization, writing and editing of the manuscript. All figures were generated by J.K.

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Correspondence to T. Tralau, M. Oelgeschläger or J. Kugler.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Thomas Hartung, Ivonne Rietjens and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Tralau, T., Oelgeschläger, M., Kugler, J. et al. A prospective whole-mixture approach to assess risk of the food and chemical exposome. Nat Food 2, 463–468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00316-7

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