Dioxin risk assessment

Participants

• Coordinator: Department of Environmental Health, National Public Health Institute of Finland
• Responsible researcher: Professor Jouko Tuomisto

Contractors

• Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Medical Nobel Institute, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
• Department of Pedodontics and Orthodontics and Department of Oral Pathology, University of Helsinki, Finland
• University Department of Clinical Pathology, Ospedale di Desio, Desio-Milan, Italy
• Department of Biomedicine and Surgery, University of Linköping, Sweden
• Institute of Biotechnology, Vilnius, Lithuania

Funding

• EU (Contract number QLK4-CT-1999-01446)

Duration

1 February 2000 - 31 January 2003

Contact person

• Professor Jouko Tuomisto

Background

Dioxins are highly toxic compounds, but the exposures are very low, picograms (pg = 0.ooooooooooo1 g) per day. For this reason and for several other reasons such as the great variability in sensitivity to dioxins of various animal species, the risk assessment is very complicated.

Objectives

This project attempted 1) to assess which is the most pertinent risk of dioxins, cancer or developmental effects, 2) to learn from animal experiments and make comparisons to results in humans, esp. pinpointing the mechanisms of action, 3) to find out if there are specific sensitive populations for genetic or other reasons, 4) to perform up-to-date dioxin risk assessment.

Files

See the Leaflet of the project (259 K) and the Project Progress Summary (35 K)

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