Towards a more reliable assessment of health risks associated with the population exposure to bisphenols

The exposure of populations to a wide range of chemicals through their outdoor and indoor environments, food, water and consumer products is a matter of growing concern for the public and health authorities. Chemical risk governance is complicated by a lack of knowledge on the composition of chemical mixtures to which populations are exposed, their spatial variability and major drivers of their toxicity, as well as long-term changes in the chemical exposures with respect to age, gender and occupation. A significant attention has been previously given to persistent pollutants or endocrine disrupting chemicals but there are important knowledge gaps related to compounds for which the concern has only recently emerged due to their increasing environmental concentrations, evidence of human exposures or alerting toxicological data. A need for the development of new approaches to the assessment of human health risks accounting for exposures to emerging chemicals and complex chemical mixtures can be demonstrated on the paper on urinary bisphenol A (BPA) and dyslipidaemia.1 The meta-analysis of National …