Analytical Strategy |
Prospective, bottom-up analysis (evaluate constituent interactions) |
Retrospective, top-down analysis (deconstruct and elucidate outcomes) |
Central Question |
What health effects are associated with a defined set of stressors? |
Which stressors explain observed or hypothesized health outcomes? |
Starting Point |
Identification of key stressors and recognition of the populations and health end points influenced by them |
Development of a conceptual model incorporating the stressors plausibly associated with critical health outcomes |
Primary Emphasis |
Analysis of stressor interactions to predict likelihood and severity of future adverse health outcomes |
Determination of stressor contributions to observed or hypothesized health outcomes, including consideration of co-exposures and background processes |
Typical Applications |
Chemical mixtures |
Combinations of chemical and nonchemical stressors |
Driving Force(s) |
Regulatory decisions about protection of human health from exposure to multiple chemicals [8,9,10,18,36,37,38,39,44,45,46] |
Demands for “environmental justice”, concerns about health disparities, and calls for community-based risk assessments [3,4,11,12,13,14,15,16,28,64,65,66,77,78,79] |