Application of Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Models in Chemical Risk Assessment.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Toxicology Volume 2012, Article ID 904603, 11 pages doi:10.1155/2012/904603 Review Article Application of Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Models in Chemical Risk Assessment Moiz Mumtaz,1 Jeffrey Fisher,2 Benjamin Blount,3 and Patricia Ruiz1 1 Computational Toxicology and Methods Development Laboratory, Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine (DTEM), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), Atlanta, GA 30333, USA 2 National Center for Toxicological Research, USFDA, Jeff erson, AR 72079, USA 3 Division of Laboratory Studies, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA 30341, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Moiz Mumtaz, mgm4@ Received 20 October 2011; Accepted 21 December 2011 Academic Editor: Kannan Krishnan Copyright © 2012 Moiz Mumtaz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Post-exposure risk assessment of chemical and environmental stressors is a public health challenge. Linking exposure to health outcomes is a 4-step process: exposure assessment, hazard identification, dose response assessment, and risk characterization. This process is increasingly adopting “in silico” tools such as physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models to fine- tune exposure assessments and determine internal doses in target organs/tissues. Many excellent PBPK models have been developed. But most, because of their scientific sophistication, have found limited field application—health assessors rarely use them. Over the years, gover