Environmental Substances

The McLaughlin Centre is active in assessing the health risks associated to the exposure of certain environmental substances through studies of copper and aluminum, aluminum oxide, and aluminium hydroxide to human health. The commercial importance of copper and the challenges in defining the dose response relationship, and hence an appropriate health protection strategy for copper, led the McLaughlin Centre, in collaboration with the International Copper Association, to undertake a detailed study of these issues.The human health effects of aluminium have been the subject of considerable debate in the scientific community.  The McLaughlin Centre convened an expert panel to complete a human health risk assessment for aluminium in collaboration with the U.S. EPA and the International Aluminum Institute.

The McLaughlin Center for Population Health Risk Assessment at the University of Ottawa participated in a working group in 2002 to review the literature on copper excess and deficiency.  In order to conduct more complex modeling exercise with studies on copper, information had to be organized into a database for application of emerging analytical approaches in exposure-response assessment. Exposure-response data extracted from relevant studies on copper excess and deficiency has been assigned to severity scores.  The copper database was originally created in 2002 and was updated in 2008. The following document presents detailed information extracted from each study in the copper database.  It also provides information on the assumptions and conversion factors used to convert the data extracted from each study to a common exposure metric.

Copper Exposure-Response Database

Further information on the database can be found in the following publication:
Krewski D, Chambers A, Stern BR, et al. Development of a copper database for exposure-response analysis. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 2010:73;208-216.