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Abstract
- Topic #4
Organic
Speciation for The Needs of Health Studies
Topic
Leader: Joe Mauderly
Contributors:
Joellen
Lewtas & Ron Wyzga
Concern
for the adverse health impacts of air pollution continues to be
the principal (albeit not the sole) motivation for air quality
regulations. Accordingly, the need to better serve research on
air quality-health relationships is a major justification for
improving the speciation of organic environmental air contaminants.
It then follows that a discussion of speciation needs and priorities
should be informed by the information needs of the health research
community. The purpose of this session is to review the needs
of health researchers for better, and more extensive, information
on the composition of airborne organic material.
An
overview by topic leader Dr. Joe Mauderly (Lovelace
Respiratory Research Institute, Albuquerque, NM) will provide
a framework for discussion by raising four general key questions:
1) Is there good evidence for the health importance of organic
air contaminants?
2) How is our current knowledge of the air quality-health relationship
limited by the present lack of analytical data?
3) How could health researchers utilize improved information?
4) How can interactions between the analytical and health research
communities be improved?
The
second presentation by Dr. Joellen Lewtas (U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Seattle, Washington) will focus
more strongly on the iterative use of speciation data and laboratory
biological response assays to identify hazards, estimate magnitudes
of risk, estimate relative risks from different organic classes
and compounds, and disentangle cause-effect relationships. Laboratory
scientists have typically had greater opportunity than epidemiologists
to develop iterative partnerships with analytical chemists. Dr.
Lewtas’ considerable experience using rapid bioassays and
bioassay-directed fractionation to understand hazards and risks
from organic fractions of environmental particles provides case
studies that illustrate how such strategies could take advantage
of better speciation.
The
third presentation by Dr. Ron Wyzga (Electric
Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California) will focus more
strongly on the potential for improved speciation to enhance epidemiological
research. When available, data from humans take precedence over
data from animals and cells in standard setting; however, population
studies raise considerable analytical challenges. Not only are
the exposures complex, uncontrolled, and variable among individuals,
but characterizing exposures of large numbers of people also places
a premium on mobile, rapid-response, and inexpensive analytical
tools. Dr. Wyzga’s experience relating exposure composition
to health outcomes in the Atlanta ARIES study to identify key
physical-chemical species and sources provides a case study for
how improved speciation data might be used by epidemiologists.
The
presentations will be followed by open discussion aimed at clarifying
the nature of the needs of the health research community for improved
speciation data and how tighter links between the disciplines
might enhance the work of both.
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SUGGESTED
READING
The
following are examples of how biologists might use speciation
results to determine putative causal agents. There are only a
few good references because there has been little work in the
area. These will give the general notion of what could be done.
Eide, I., G. Neverdal, B. Thorvaldsen, B. Grung, and O. Kvalheim.
Toxicological Evaluation of Complex Mixtures by Pattern Recognition:
Correlating Chemical Fingerprints to Mutagenicity. Environ. Health
Perspect. 110 (Suppl. 6):985-988, 2002.
Wellenius, G., B. Coull, J. Godleski, P. Koutrakis, K. Okabe,
S. Savage, J. Lawrence, G. Krishna Murthy, and R. Verrier. Inhalation
of concentrated Ambient Air Particles Exacerbates Myocardial ischemia
in Conscious Dogs. Environ. Health Perspect. 111 (4): 402-408,
2003.
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