Toxicological food safety

We currently live in a "chemical society" and production and use of chemicals unfortunately result in un-wanted chemical contamination of food and drinking water. The aim of the toxicological food safety research is to produce scientific results of high quality in the fields of exposure assessment and hazard characterization. The research is an integral part of the "One Health" concept focusing on the relation between animal and human health. The goal of the food toxicology research is to significantly contribute to a food/drinking water production that is sustainable and safe in a human health perspective.

Molecular toxicology

By development and use of innovative mechanism-based in vitro models our research activities are focused on investigations of toxic compounds from the food chain for hazard identification and mechanistic understanding of effects. The research emphasis is on three areas.

- Toxicity pathways: Cell-based in vitro assays are of great value for studies of toxicity pathways. These in vitro models enables us to measure the initial molecular effects of a low-dose exposure of a chemical on the biological system, which can be used for prediction of toxicity, rather than more proximal end-points after often unrealistic high-dose exposure, which are used in regulatory animal studies.

- Pollutants in drinking water: Today, most environmental monitoring of drinking water and environmental water is conducted by chemical analysis. This strategy has major disadvantages; it is expensive and time consuming, it can only detect known substances, it does not necessarily correlate to toxic effects, and it is very difficult to assess mixture effects. Our research aims to establish a battery of new test methods that would allow us to assess the total toxic activity in a large number of water samples to a moderate cost.

- Effect-directed analysis (EDA): EDA is based on the idea that the biological effect of an environmental sample is a trigger for further chemical analysis. If a certain sample lack toxic potential, the need for chemical characterization of that sample is low. If a sample on the other hand exert toxicity, it is prioritized to use integrated chemical and toxicological profiling of the sample to understand which compound(s) that are causing the toxicity.

Epidemiological toxicology

The current research focus covers 2 main areas:

- Research on human exposure to chemicals/elements in food and drinking water. We currently use biomonitoring, i.e. measurements of chemical concentration in human tissues, to determine human exposure to poly- and perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs) and to determine the importance of drinking water exposure. Exposure research also includes studies of maternal/fetal/child exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), such as dioxins, PCBs, and brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) with the aim to determine exposure levels and to identify sources of exposure.

- Possible health effects of exposure early in life. The focus is on health consequences of early life/childhood/adolescence exposures and health development, since these life-stages are especially sensitive to toxic effects of chemicals. Research includes studies of the thyroid hormone and immune systems, and effects on birth outcomes and infections.