IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v23y2003i1p19-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing Cancer Risks from Short‐Term Exposures in Children

Author

Listed:
  • Gary L. Ginsberg

Abstract

For the vast majority of chemicals that have cancer potency estimates on IRIS, the underlying database is deficient with respect to early‐life exposures. This data gap has prevented derivation of cancer potency factors that are relevant to this time period, and so assessments may not fully address children's risks. This article provides a review of juvenile animal bioassay data in comparison to adult animal data for a broad array of carcinogens. This comparison indicates that short‐term exposures in early life are likely to yield a greater tumor response than short‐term exposures in adults, but similar tumor response when compared to long‐term exposures in adults. This evidence is brought into a risk assessment context by proposing an approach that: (1) does not prorate children's exposures over the entire life span or mix them with exposures that occur at other ages; (2) applies the cancer slope factor from adult animal or human epidemiology studies to the children's exposure dose to calculate the cancer risk associated with the early‐life period; and (3) adds the cancer risk for young children to that for older children/adults to yield a total lifetime cancer risk. The proposed approach allows for the unique exposure and pharmacokinetic factors associated with young children to be fully weighted in the cancer risk assessment. It is very similar to the approach currently used by U.S. EPA for vinyl chloride. The current analysis finds that the database of early life and adult cancer bioassays supports extension of this approach from vinyl chloride to other carcinogens of diverse mode of action. This approach should be enhanced by early‐life data specific to the particular carcinogen under analysis whenever possible.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary L. Ginsberg, 2003. "Assessing Cancer Risks from Short‐Term Exposures in Children," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(1), pages 19-34, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:23:y:2003:i:1:p:19-34
    DOI: 10.1111/1539-6924.00287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1539-6924.00287
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1539-6924.00287?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:23:y:2003:i:1:p:19-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.