The Future of Human Health Risk Assessment of Environmental Chemicals

Dramatic changes are beginning to take place in risk assessment, changes that will involve rapid, high-throughput assays capable of analyzing large numbers of samples in a short time. These new systems will incorporate many of the aspects of cellular and molecular biology, including human and human-derived cell lines, toxicogenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. The large amount of data generated will require a systems biology approach if it is to be reduced to generalizations of value in risk management. The current chapter briefly describes the emerging systems and their component parts.