TY - JOUR
T1 - The Eco-Exposome Concept
T2 - Supporting an Integrated Assessment of Mixtures of Environmental Chemicals
AU - Scholz, Stefan
AU - Nichols, John W.
AU - Escher, Beate I.
AU - Ankley, Gerald T.
AU - Altenburger, Rolf
AU - Blackwell, Brett
AU - Brack, Werner
AU - Burkhard, Lawrence
AU - Collette, Timothy W.
AU - Doering, Jon A.
AU - Ekman, Drew
AU - Fay, Kellie
AU - Fischer, Fabian
AU - Hackermüller, Jörg
AU - Hoffman, Joel C.
AU - Lai, Chih
AU - Leuthold, David
AU - Martinovic-Weigelt, Dalma
AU - Reemtsma, Thorsten
AU - Pollesch, Nathan
AU - Schroeder, Anthony
AU - Schüürmann, Gerrit
AU - von Bergen, Martin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - Organisms are exposed to ever-changing complex mixtures of chemicals over the course of their lifetime. The need to more comprehensively describe this exposure and relate it to adverse health effects has led to formulation of the exposome concept in human toxicology. Whether this concept has utility in the context of environmental hazard and risk assessment has not been discussed in detail. In this Critical Perspective, we propose-by analogy to the human exposome-to define the eco-exposome as the totality of the internal exposure (anthropogenic and natural chemicals, their biotransformation products or adducts, and endogenous signaling molecules that may be sensitive to an anthropogenic chemical exposure) over the lifetime of an ecologically relevant organism. We describe how targeted and nontargeted chemical analyses and bioassays can be employed to characterize this exposure and discuss how the adverse outcome pathway concept could be used to link this exposure to adverse effects. Available methods, their limitations, and/or requirement for improvements for practical application of the eco-exposome concept are discussed. Even though analysis of the eco-exposome can be resource-intensive and challenging, new approaches and technologies make this assessment increasingly feasible. Furthermore, an improved understanding of mechanistic relationships between external chemical exposure(s), internal chemical exposure(s), and biological effects could result in the development of proxies, that is, relatively simple chemical and biological measurements that could be used to complement internal exposure assessment or infer the internal exposure when it is difficult to measure. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:30-45. © 2021 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
AB - Organisms are exposed to ever-changing complex mixtures of chemicals over the course of their lifetime. The need to more comprehensively describe this exposure and relate it to adverse health effects has led to formulation of the exposome concept in human toxicology. Whether this concept has utility in the context of environmental hazard and risk assessment has not been discussed in detail. In this Critical Perspective, we propose-by analogy to the human exposome-to define the eco-exposome as the totality of the internal exposure (anthropogenic and natural chemicals, their biotransformation products or adducts, and endogenous signaling molecules that may be sensitive to an anthropogenic chemical exposure) over the lifetime of an ecologically relevant organism. We describe how targeted and nontargeted chemical analyses and bioassays can be employed to characterize this exposure and discuss how the adverse outcome pathway concept could be used to link this exposure to adverse effects. Available methods, their limitations, and/or requirement for improvements for practical application of the eco-exposome concept are discussed. Even though analysis of the eco-exposome can be resource-intensive and challenging, new approaches and technologies make this assessment increasingly feasible. Furthermore, an improved understanding of mechanistic relationships between external chemical exposure(s), internal chemical exposure(s), and biological effects could result in the development of proxies, that is, relatively simple chemical and biological measurements that could be used to complement internal exposure assessment or infer the internal exposure when it is difficult to measure. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:30-45. © 2021 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122132406&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85122132406&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/etc.5242
DO - 10.1002/etc.5242
M3 - Article
C2 - 34714945
AN - SCOPUS:85122132406
SN - 0730-7268
VL - 41
SP - 30
EP - 45
JO - Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
JF - Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
IS - 1
ER -