Activity profiles of carcinogenicity data: application in hazard identification and risk assessment

Use of rodent data for cancer risk assessment of smokeless tobacco in the regulatory context

To support risk management decisions, information from different fields has been integrated in this presentation to provide a realistic quantitative cancer risk assessment of smokeless tobacco. Smoking among Swedish men is currently below 10%, while about 20% use a special smokeless tobacco (snus) as a substitute for cigarettes. Epidemiological data and molecular biomarkers demonstrate that rodent bioassays with tobacco specific nitrosamines (TSNA) overestimate cancer risk from snus by more than one order of magnitude. The underlying reasons are discussed. DNA damage constitutes a necessary, although not sufficient prerequisite for cancer initiation. Individuals who have not used tobacco exhibit DNA lesions identical with those induced by TSNA. No increase above this adduct background can be shown from snus, and extensive epidemiological studies in Sweden have failed to demonstrate elevated cancer risks even in long term users. A "bench mark" for acceptable risk of 1/10(6) derived from rodent data has been suggested when regulating snus. By relating similarly derived estimates for some food contaminants, the implementation even of a limit of 1/10(4) may be unrealistic. The management of smokeless tobacco products has rarely been based on a scientifically sound risk assessment, where attention is given to the outstandingly higher hazards associated with smoking.

Databases applicable to quantitative hazard/risk assessment--towards a predictive systems toxicology

The Workshop on The Power of Aggregated Toxicity Data addressed the requirement for distributed databases to support quantitative hazard and risk assessment. The authors have conceived and constructed with federal support several databases that have been used in hazard identification and risk assessment. The first of these databases, the EPA Gene-Tox Database was developed for the EPA Office of Toxic Substances by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is currently hosted by the National Library of Medicine. This public resource is based on the collaborative evaluation, by government, academia, and industry, of short-term tests for the detection of mutagens and presumptive carcinogens. The two-phased evaluation process resulted in more than 50 peer-reviewed publications on test system performance and a qualitative database on thousands of chemicals. Subsequently, the graphic and quantitative EPA/IARC Genetic Activity Profile (GAP) Database was developed in collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). A chemical database driven by consideration of the lowest effective dose, GAP has served IARC for many years in support of hazard classification of potential human carcinogens. The Toxicological Activity Profile (TAP) prototype database was patterned after GAP and utilized acute, subchronic, and chronic data from the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. TAP demonstrated the flexibility of the GAP format for air toxics, water pollutants and other environmental agents. The GAP format was also applied to developmental toxicants and was modified to represent quantitative results from the rodent carcinogen bioassay. More recently, the authors have constructed: 1) the NIEHS Genetic Alterations in Cancer (GAC) Database which quantifies specific mutations found in cancers induced by environmental agents, and 2) the NIEHS Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS) Knowledgebase that integrates genomic and other biological data including dose-response studies in toxicology and pathology. Each of the public databases has been discussed in prior publications. They will be briefly described in the present report from the perspective of aggregating datasets to augment the data and information contained within them.

Qualitative and quantitative procedures for health risk assessment

Numerous reactive mutagenic electrophiles are present in the environment or are formed in the human body through metabolizing processes. Those electrophiles can directly react with DNA and are considered to be ultimate carcinogens. In the past decades more than 200 in vitro and in vivo genotoxic tests have been described to identify, monitor and characterize the exposure of humans to such agents. When the responses of such genotoxic tests are quantified by a weight-of-evidence analysis, it is found that the intrinsic potency of electrophiles being mutagens does not differ much for the majority of the agents studied. Considering the fact that under normal environmental circumstances human are exposed to low concentration of about a million electrophiles, the relation between exposure to such agents and adverse health effects (e.g., cancer) will become a 'Pandora's box'. For quantitative risk assessment it will be necessary not only to detect whether the agent is genotoxic, but also understand the mechanism of interaction of the agent with the DNA in target cells needs to be taken into account. Examples are given for a limited group of important environmental and carcinogenic agents for which such an approach is feasible. The groups identified are agents that form cross-links with DNA or are mono-alkylating agents that react with base-moieties in the DNA strands. Quantitative hazard ranking of the mutagenic potency of these groups of chemical can be performed and there is ample evidence that such a ranking corresponds with the individual carcinogenic potency of those agents in rodents. Still, in practice, with the exception of certain occupational or accidental exposure situations, these approaches have not be successful in preventing cancer death in the human population. However, this is not only due to the described 'Pandora's box' situation. At least three other factors are described. Firstly, in the industrial world the medical treatment of cancer in patients occurs with high levels of extremely mutagenic agents. Actually, both in number of persons and in exposure levels such medical treatment is the single largest exposure of humans to known carcinogens. Although such treatments are very effective in curing the tumor as present in the patient, the recurrence of cancer in those patients later in life is very high. In other words: "curing cancer is not the same as preventing cancer death in the human population". Secondly, the rate of cancer death in the human population is also determined by the efficacy in which other major causes of death are prevented. For instance, cardiovascular diseases are the major cause of death in humans in the industrialized world. There is evidence that the treatment of cardiovascular diseases is more successful than that of cancer. On a population level this will result in increase of cancer being the ultimate death cause. Finally, the improvement of medical treatment of diseases together with an improved quality of life will lead to increase average age of the population. Because the onset of most cancer is long after the exposure to carcinogens-in human often more than 30 years-cancer is predominantly a disease of the old age. This means that if the average age of human increases, there will be a selective preference of cancer becoming an even more important cause of death. This especially will be pronounced in those countries were the age distribution in a population is abnormal.

A survey of EPA/OPP and open literature on selected pesticide chemicals. II. Mutagenicity and carcinogenicity of selected chloroacetanilides and related compounds

With this effort, we continue our examination of data on selected pesticide chemicals and their related analogues that have been presented to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA's) Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP). This report focuses on a group of selected chloroacetanilides and a few related compounds. As part of the registration process for pesticidal chemicals, interested parties (registrants) must submit toxicity information to support the registration including both mutagenicity and carcinogenicity data. Although this information is available to the public via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the OPP, publication in the scientific literature allows greater dissemination and examination of the data. For this Special Issue, graphic profiles have been prepared of the mutagenicity and carcinogenicity data available in the submissions to OPP. Also, a discussion is presented about how toxicity data are used to help establish tolerances (limits of pesticide residues in foods). The mutagenicity results submitted by registrants are supplemented by data on these chemicals from the open literature to provide a full perspective of their genetic toxicology. The group of chloroacetanilides reviewed here display a consistent pattern of mutagenic activity, probably mediated via metabolites. This mutagenic activity is a mechanistically plausible factor in the development of tumors seen in experimental animals exposed to this class of chemicals.