Johns Hopkins University. School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Abstract
Separate abstracts were prepared for 20 papers in this report. For several years the Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER), has supported a research program aimed at developing new experimental approaches for the improvement of cancer risk assessments. The central issue is to overcome the organizational, species and other barriers that make it difficult to extrapolate laboratory-based data to predict risk to man. Most of the participants at the meeting are involved in research aimed at understanding the mechanism(s) of chemical carcinogenesis. Complex mixtures of chemicals are associated with many energy technologies. DOE's initial program emphasis focused on semi-applied research aimed at quantitative evaluation of carcinogenic activity of complex materials. Since much progress has been made in DOE integrated technology-specific chemical-biological characterization studies, the number and kinds of chemicals of concern has been reduced to a relatively few well-defined classes. Although the classes of compounds seem to be unique to some of the synfuel technologies, they are quite similar to compounds of general interest, for example, poly-nuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. Special emphasis was placed on molecular and cellular dosimetry as one of the key requirements for quantitative comparison of effects at the cell level in vivo and in vitro. Although it is relatively easy to measure cell, tissue, organ and whole organism doses associated with radiation exposures, we are just learning how to do this for chemical agents. Several methods have been developed in the past several years which can be used
