Perspectives for integrating human and environmental risk assessment and synergies with socio-economic analysis.

For more than a decade, the integration of human and environmental risk assessment (RA) has become an attractive vision. At the same time, existing European regulations of chemical substances such as REACH (EC Regulation No. 1907/2006), the Plant Protection Products Regulation (EC regulation 1107/2009) and Biocide Regulation (EC Regulation 528/2012) continue to ask for sector-specific RAs, each of which have their individual information requirements regarding exposure and hazard data, and also use different methodologies for the ultimate risk quantification. In response to this difference between the vision for integration and the current scientific and regulatory practice, the present paper outlines five medium-term opportunities for integrating human and environmental RA, followed by detailed discussions of the associated major components and their state of the art. Current hazard assessment approaches are analyzed in terms of data availability and quality, and covering non-test tools, the integrated testing strategy (ITS) approach, the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept, methods for assessing uncertainty, and the issue of explicitly treating mixture toxicity. With respect to exposure, opportunities for integrating exposure assessment are discussed, taking into account the uncertainty, standardization and validation of exposure modeling as well as the availability of exposure data. A further focus is on ways to complement RA by a socio-economic assessment (SEA) in order to better inform about risk management options. In this way, the present analysis, developed as part of the EU FP7 project HEROIC, may contribute to paving the way for integrating, where useful and possible, human and environmental RA in a manner suitable for its coupling with SEA.

Food specific IgE antibodies: a comparative study of AlaSTAT and Pharmacia RAST Phadebas CAP systems in 49 patients with food allergies.

Forty-nine sera from patients with food allergies confirmed by challenge and of 14 with suspected allergy were assayed with the DPC AlaSTAT liquid phase EIA and the Phadebas RAST CAP radioimmunoassay (RIA). Twenty-two foods were tested (four animals, 18 vegetables). Controls were performed on nonatopic subjects (N = 8). Specificity was 100%. Concordance RAST CAP/AlaSTAT was 79.6%; prick tests/AlaSTAT: 76%; prick tests/RAST CAP: 73.9%. AlaSTAT detected specific IgE even in sera with low total IgE (< 60 KU/L), while RAST CAP was inconclusive. Dilution studies and reproducibility were excellent. AlaSTAT EIA compares favorably with the Phadebas RAST CAP RIA for measurement of food-specific IgE antibodies.