What are the Challenges in Toxicological Epidemiology?
Toxicological epidemiology faces several challenges, including:
Exposure Assessment: Accurately measuring exposure levels can be difficult, especially for chemicals that are ubiquitous in the environment or have long biological half-lives. Confounding Factors: Identifying and controlling for confounding factors that may influence the relationship between exposure and health outcomes is essential for producing valid results. Latency Periods: Many health effects, especially cancers, have long latency periods, complicating the assessment of exposure-outcome relationships. Ethical Considerations: Conducting studies that involve human subjects requires careful ethical consideration, particularly when dealing with potentially harmful exposures.
