A handbook of environmental toxicology: human disorders and ecotoxicology.

Chapter 39 (Page no: 577)

21st Century toxicology: methods for environmental toxicology and monitoring.

Traditional animal toxicity testing has been challenged in this century to shift towards toxicity pathway-based approaches for a more efficient evaluation of a large number of chemicals and a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying toxicological effects. The toxicity pathway describes what is happening in a cell when it is exposed to a toxic substance. Bioanalytical methods, e.g. in vitro bioassays, are valuable tools in environmental toxicology to study critical toxicity mechanisms to assess toxicity of compounds of environmental concern or in environmental samples. These in vitro models enable measurement of the initial molecular effects of a low-dose exposure of a chemical on the biological system, which can be used for prediction of toxicity, rather than more proximal end points after often unrealistic high-dose exposure, which are used in regulatory animal studies. The development and application of in vitro bioassays for environmental toxicology is a rapidly developing field of research with a large number of studies published during the past decade. This chapter will review the conceptual framework of the '21st century toxicology' strategy, the principles for different in vitro bioassays, a number of key toxicity pathways, how these bioassays have been applied both for pure compounds and for environmental samples and how the methodology can be used for effect-directed analysis aiming to identify novel bioactive environmental pollutants.

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