Consideration of Regulatory Guidelines in the Analysis of Mixtures of Environmental Chemicals and Nutrients

Abstract

We introduce a new class of models that include the regulatory concept of “acceptable concentration range” (ACR). These models complement current risk assessment methods by estimating regulatory guideline values using human biomonitoring data. We illustrate the strategy using prenatal concentrations from 11 environmental chemicals and two health outcomes. We determine that the published guideline values are orders of magnitude higher than those estimated using human data. The results suggest that chemical-by-chemical approaches underestimate risk by a factor that range from 1 to 100 for different chemicals. Further, we have developed a personalized nutrition index that measures the nutrient quality (i.e., “nutritiousness”) of a specified daily diet and is calculated based on quantification of dozens of macro- and micronutrients that are specific to an individual’s nutritional needs (as defined by published recommended guidelines for individual nutrient target ranges) by incorporating dietary restrictions, subject characteristics, activity level, and health behaviors. We illustrate the use of the nutrition index based on food frequency questionnaire nutrient estimates, adjusted for total calories, in evaluating the potential mitigating effect of good nutrition on environmental toxins and in evaluating dietary sources of toxic chemicals. (We gratefully acknowledge support from NIEHS: #R01ES028811)