In this presentation, I will give an overview on how concepts in environmental chemistry such as multimedia fate models and equilibrium partitioning concepts have inspired mechanistic approaches in toxicology. I illustrate this with examples from my and others’ work published often in ES&T. In particular, I want to acknowledge mentors Rene Schwarzenbach, John Westall and Joop Hermens and highlight work of numerous collaborators. In my first two ES&T papers in 1996, I used octanol- and membrane-water partitioning of ionizable organic chemicals as well as time-resolved kinetic spectrometry to explain a fundamental toxicological problem, i.e., how to differentiate different mechanisms of toxicity on the example of uncoupling and inhibition of energy transduction. This work ultimately led to toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic models in ecotoxicology and later human toxicology. Over the years, the applications and scope of work has greatly expanded but even the acclaimed concept of adverse outcome pathways (AOP) continues in this tradition of looking at compartments in the environment and biological systems as a series of boxes interconnected by differential equations - from molecules to cells, organism, organisms and ecosystems. Today we use in vitro methods rooted in AOPs not only to investigate modes of toxic action but also as tools for chemical risk assessment as well as environmental monitoring and biomonitoring– including assessment of engineered systems for their capacity to eliminate environmental contaminants from wastewater. Membrane-water partition and protein binding constants remain key parameters for in vitro to in vivo extrapolation, which is important for application of in vitro methods for chemical risk assessment. They also serve for prediction of baseline toxicity, which helps to data gaps and anchor experimental toxicity to identify the degree of specificity of effects. As chemical pollution has become much more diverse, extracting complex mixtures from complex matrices, including biological materials and human tissues has become more of a challenge than in the days of persistent organic pollutants. A smart combination of innovative extraction methods with analytical and bioanalytical tools has given us a breakthrough in addressing the (eco)exposome- the entirety of chemical exposure to wildlife and humans.

Learning from environmental chemistry: A mechanism-based approach to toxicology and chemical risk assessment

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