Study designs and best practices

Studies may be designed for estimating exposures to a wide array of wildlife, including birds, mammals and amphibians. Many regulatory requirements involve birds, and less emphasis is currently placed on other species. As regulatory requirements evolve, ecological risk assessments will be required for more species. This may require alternative approaches for food item analysis to allow estimates of pesticide ingestion. 

One shortcoming in many field studies is a failure to address adequately exposure to toxic transformation products. In efforts to manage time and cost constraints, the concentrations of parent materials and transformation products are often added together to produce a total toxic residue amount. However, it is more appropriate to evaluate individual transformation products as their toxicity may be significantly increased (e.g. active oxons) or decreased (e.g. dehalogenation or dealkylation products) relative to the parent compound. 

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Milner et al. [1] have pointed out that the development and implementation of a successful interdisciplinary effort that integrates and exploits a molecular approach to nutrition-related health and disease research will require both time and patience, to which might be added the availability of adequate resources. The quantity of data that such studies will generate over the next few years is difficult to overestimate, and, in science as elsewhere, quantity does not necessarily equate with quality. As pointed out by the authors of the opening chapter, the onus will be on scientists to adhere to well-established good scientific principles of study design and best practice if the anticipated research is to be exploited to the maximum. 

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