Environmental Health Sciences Department Grant: Developing Innovative Methods for Chemical Mixture Toxicity Assessment

This Request for Applications (RFA) solicits research focused on the development and evaluation of innovative methods and approaches to inform human health risk assessment of environmental chemical mixtures. Because most of the human chemical body burden involves concurrent or sequential exposures to mixtures of chemicals, methods to make better-informed, timelier evaluations of chemical mixtures of known, or partially-known, composition have long been needed. A challenge in conducting mixtures assessment is the lack of useful hazard and dose response data and other information on chemical mixtures. Potential chemical mixtures exposures of public health concern typically encountered in environmental media may include classes or subclasses of compounds (for example, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances [PFAS], phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs], disinfection by-products [DBPs]), or any other well-characterized mixtures. Applications are being sought that propose approaches and strategies that integrate in vitro, in silico, and/or non-mammalian in vivo methods that can contribute to decision-making science associated with toxicity evaluation and human health assessment of chemical mixtures.