Chronic health effects

Chronic Health Effect A chronic health effect is an adverse health effect resulting from long-term exposure to a substance. The effects could be a skin rash, bronchitis, cancer, or any other medical condition. An example would be liver cancer from inhaling low levels of benzene at your workplace over several years. The term is also applied to a persistent (months, years, or permanent) adverse health effect resulting from a short-term (acute) exposure. Chronic effects from long-term exposure to chemicals are fairly common. Recognize the PEL (permissible exposure level) for each substance in your workplace and minimize your exposure whenever possible. 

A) The examination, summary, and interpretation of available toxicologic information and epidemiologic evaluations on a hazardous substance to ascertain the levels of significant human exposure for the substance and the associated acute, subacute, and chronic health effects ... 

B) A determination of whether adequate information on the health effects of each substance is available or in the process of development to determine levels of exposure that present a significant risk to human health of acute, subacute, and chronic health effects and... 

Epidemiological and Human Dosimetry Studies. No epidemiological studies were located. However, prior to conducting any large-scale studies, animal studies are needed to determine what, if any, chronic health effects occur after exposure to diisopropyl methylphosphonate. In addition, appropriate cohorts would be very difficult to identify. 

Yoshida, T., Yamauchi, H., and Sun, G.F., Chronic health effects in people exposed to arsenic via the drinking water Dose-response relationships in review, Toxicol. Appl. Pharmacol., 198, 243, 2004. 

Environmentally Induced Illnesses Ethics, Risk Assessment and Human Rights. Thomas Kerns, Jefferson, NC McFarland, [in press]. Addresses the ethics of managing environmental health and ubiquitous toxicants (such as solvents, pesticides and artificial fragrances). The work includes recent medical literature on chronic health effects from exposure to toxicants and the social costs of these disorders relevant historic and human rights documents recommendations for public policy and legislation and primary obstacles faced by public health advocates. 

In animal experiments exposures can be carefully controlled, and dose-response curves can be formally estimated. Extrapolating such information to the human situation is often done for regulatory purposes. There are several models for estimating a lifetime cancer risk in humans based on extrapolation from animal data. These models, however, are premised on empirically unverified assumptions that limit their usefulness for quantitative purposes. While quantitative cancer risk assessment is widely used, it is by no means universally accepted. Using different models, one can arrive at estimates of potential cancer incidence in humans that vary by several orders of magnitude for a given level of exposure. Such variations make it rather difficult to place confidence intervals around benefits estimations for regulatory purposes. Furthermore, low dose risk estimation methods have not been developed for chronic health effects other than cancer. The... 

A chemical for which there is statistically significant evidence based on at least one study conducted in accordance with established scientific principles that acute or chronic health effects may occur in exposed employees. 

A lot of concern also focuses on additives from packaging materials ending up in food (e.g., phthalate plasticizers, which are accused of many serious, chronic health effects). 

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