Including non-dietary sources into an exposure assessment of the European Food Safety Authority: the challenge of multi-sector chemicals such as Bisphenol A

In the most recent risk assessment for Bisphenol A for the first time a multi-route aggregate exposure assessment was conducted by the European Food Safety Authority. This assessment includes exposure via dietary sources, and also contributions of the most important non-dietary sources. Both average and high aggregate exposure were calculated by source-to-dose modeling (forward calculation) for different age groups and compared with estimates based on urinary biomonitoring data (backward calculation). The aggregate exposure estimates obtained by forward and backward modeling are in the same order of magnitude, with forward modeling yielding higher estimates associated with larger uncertainty. Yet, only forward modeling can indicate the relative contribution of different sources. Dietary exposure, especially via canned food, appears to be the most important exposure source and, based on the central aggregate exposure estimates, contributes around 90% to internal exposure to total (conjugated plus unconjugated) BPA. Dermal exposure via thermal paper and to a lesser extent via cosmetic products may contribute around 10% for some age groups. The uncertainty around these estimates is considerable, but since after dermal absorption a first-pass metabolism of BPA by conjugation is lacking, dermal sources may be of equal or even higher toxicological relevance than dietary sources.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An integrated model of the recognition of Candida albicans by the innate immune system.

Contains fulltext : 69770.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The innate immune response was once considered to be a limited set of responses that aimed to contain an infection by primitive 'ingest and kill' mechanisms, giving the host time to mount a specific humoral and cellular immune response. In the mid-1990s, however, the discovery of Toll-like receptors heralded a revolution in our understanding of how microorganisms are recognized by the innate immune system, and how this system is activated. Several major classes of pathogen-recognition receptors have now been described, each with specific abilities to recognize conserved bacterial structures. The challenge ahead is to understand the level of complexity that underlies the response that is triggered by pathogen recognition. In this Review, we use the fungal pathogen Candida albicans as a model for the complex interaction that exists between the host pattern-recognition systems and invading microbial pathogens