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.
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