Linking Site Specific Contaminant Mixtures to Biological Responses

Linking Site Specific Contaminant Mixtures to Biological Responses
http://tools.niehs.nih.gov/srp/researchbriefs/view.cfm?Brief_ID=184

"Background: Understanding environmental exposures and accurately predicting their impact on human and aquatic ecosystem health requires innovative, interdisciplinary approaches. Quantifying exposure is complicated. For example, measures of "total" ambient contaminant concentrations may represent only a rough estimate of potential exposures-in part because such analyses measure only specifically defined contaminants of interest. In addition, concentration measurements may not accurately reflect the bioavailable fraction of contaminants, or take into account the synergistic or agonistic interactions of compounds in a contaminant mixture."