Chemical mixtures research: Significance and future perspectives

The study of chemical mixtures is an important area of research because of its potential impact on how risk is assessed in populations exposed to multiple environmental agents. Clearly, individuals are exposed to myriad chemical agents during their lifetime. Low-dose chronic exposure to environmental agents and the additional lifestyle factors that may affect health are extremely difficult to assess by conventional approaches. Classic scientific approaches, while serving the research community well in assessing the impact of single chemicals on the functioning of biological systems, may be inadequate to address aggregate and cumulative exposures of multiple chemicals in living systems. Over the past decades, there have been extraordinary scientific and computational technology advances. Through the incorporation of technological advances in microarrays, laser capture microdissection, imaging, and high through-put technologies, we can now study in greater detail the properties of mixtures and begin to define those characteristics that are sufficiently similar to allow extrapolation of data from one mixture to another. Bioinformatics and other computational approaches would also be integrated into this research scheme, not only for data analysis but also to develop predictive models that could be used for risk assessment. Integrated approaches that address these issues will be necessary to advance our understanding of the health relevance of exposure to mixtures.