Advances toxicological research on occupational health and poison control / 中国药理学与毒理学杂志

ABSTRACT

The number of chemicals that are synthesized each year has been steadily increasing. Chemicals are of immense benefits to mankind,many of which,however,have a significant negative impact on the environment as well as human health primarily due to their inherent chemistry and toxici?ty. Human exposure to numerous toxic chemicals takes place not only in the environment and but also in the workplace. Therefore,new approaches to toxicology need to developed. A milestone in this regard is the versions of the US National Research Council ″Toxicity Testing in the 21st Centurya Vision and a Strategy ″ and ″Science and DecisionsAdvancing Risk Assessment ″. The versions require a radical paradigm shift in the approach to safety assessment and in the traditional procedure where animal experiments used to be the dominating technology. The future of toxicology suggests a new conceptual framework within which in vitro and in silico approaches based on human materials are used to under?stand disease pathways at multiple biological levels that are analogous to adverse outcome pathways in toxicology. This paper focuses on the many challenges and issues that need to be solved in this area.