Human exposure to new chemicals from indoor environments.

The project aims firstly to characterize the presence, relevance and contribution of substitute phthalates and flame retardants in consumer goods (plastic materials, textiles, etc) and characterization of human exposure pathways (dietary and non-dietary: air, dust) to such chemicals. A general priority list for these new chemicals regarding their presence in indoor dust, air and food samples will be addressed in relation to their emission sources. Afterward, the identification of relevant biotransformation pathways of selected substitute chemicals present in the indoor environment through a combination of in vitro experiments and various mass spectrometry techniques will be the second important research direction of this project. Rat, pooled human liver microsomes and plasma will be used to characterize the metabolism of selected chemicals. Exposure experiments will be conducted with single and mixtures, at various doses relevant for the concentrations measured in indoor air, dust or food samples. Finally, the identification and quantification of parent compounds and their metabolites in human blood and urine samples will be performed in order to validate the results obtained from the in vitro experiments. The utility of non-invasive matrices (hair, nails, saliva) for providing accurate measures of internal exposure to selected new chemicals will also be evaluated.

Keywords:INDOOR AIR QUALITY, TOXICOLOGY

Disciplines:Biomarker discovery and evaluation, Drug discovery and development, Medicinal products, Pharmaceutics, Pharmacognosy and phytochemistry, Pharmacology, Pharmacotherapy, Toxicology and toxinology, Other pharmaceutical sciences