Risk Assessment Initiatives for Noncancer Endpoints: Implications for Risk Characterization of Chemical Mixtures

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Abstract
The U. S. EPA must provide guidance as to health risk assessment of mixtures from a variety of sources such as wastewaters, hazard ous waste sites and air particulates. One approach to risk assess ment of mixtures is to add up risk assessments for individual components identified as part of the mixture, after considering the potential for interaction among those components. This provides an index of hazard potential but not a quantitative estimate. When data on mixture components are incomplete, but these components are isomers or congeners of a well-studied chemical, another technique—use of toxic equivalency factors—can be applied. This approach has been proposed for estimating risk associated with chlorinated dioxins and dibenzofurans. A third approach, that of relative or comparative potency, is based on the assumption that for similar but not necessarily definable complex mixtures, a mea sure of relative potency based on data from in vitro tests can be correlated in a constant fashion with relative potency from an in vivo bioassay.

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