Green Toxicology – Application of predictive toxicology

Humans are constantly challenged by exposure to a cocktail of chemicals that can have negative health effects, and fetuses and young children are particularly vulnerable. Therefore, we need safer chemicals in order to reduce any potential environmental and human hazards. A solid framework to design safer chemicals and to identify problematic compounds already in use such as industrial compounds, drugs, pesticides and cosmetics, is required. Green toxicology is the application of predictive toxicology to the production of chemicals with the specific intent of improving their design for hazard reduction. This objective is partly achieved through core principles of green chemistry. However, better utilization of existing predictive toxicological tools alongside new inventions is still required. For this, input from toxicologists early in the chemical enterprise is necessary to make informed choices on molecular design. Current tools, including (Quantitative) Structure-Activity Relationships ((Q)SARs) for predicting toxicity, Physiologically Based Kinetic (PBK) dynamic modeling for predicting absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, as well as human cell-based methods, deserve to be applied in chemical risk assessment to a greater extent than is currently the case. Greater focus on these tools, their strengths and weaknesses, should be part of chemistry training at the university level, thus ensuring constant focus on the issue and fostering new inventions into the future.