Citation:
Elke S. Reichwaldt, Daniel Stone, Dani J. Barrington, Som C. Sinang and Anas Ghadouani. Development of toxicological risk assessment models for acute and chronic exposure to pollutants. Toxins, 2016, Volume 8, Issue 9, Article number 251
Abstract:
Alert level frameworks advise agencies on a sequence of monitoring and management
actions, and are implemented so as to reduce the risk of the public coming into contact with hazardous
substances. Their effectiveness relies on the detection of the hazard, but with many systems not
receiving any regular monitoring, pollution events often go undetected. We developed toxicological
risk assessment models for acute and chronic exposure to pollutants that incorporate the probabilities
that the public will come into contact with undetected pollution events, to identify the level of risk a
system poses in regards to the pollutant. As a proof of concept, we successfully demonstrated that
the models could be applied to determine probabilities of acute and chronic illness types related to
recreational activities in waterbodies containing cyanotoxins. Using the acute model, we identified
lakes that present a ‘high’ risk to develop Day Away From Work illness, and lakes that present a
‘low’ or ‘medium’ risk to develop First Aid Cases when used for swimming. The developed risk
models succeeded in categorising lakes according to their risk level to the public in an objective
way. Modelling by how much the probability of public exposure has to decrease to lower the risks
to acceptable levels will enable authorities to identify suitable control measures and monitoring
strategies. We suggest broadening the application of these models to other contaminants.