DeVito, Bokkers B, van Duursen M, van Ede K, Feeley M,… Haws L,… Wikoff D, et al. The 2022 WHO reevaluation of human and mammalian toxic equivalency factors for polychlorinated dioxins, dibenzofurans and biphenyls. Abstract 3626, Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, March 2024.
Abstract
Background and Purpose: Human exposure to chlorinated dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) occurs as complex mixtures primarily through the diet from food of animal origin. The observation that DLCs induce similar toxic effects mediated through the Ah Receptor, led to the development of the Toxic Equivalency Factor method, where DLCs are assigned potency factors (TEFs) relative to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-pdioxin (TCDD), the prototype DLC. Chemical specific TEF values are multiplied by their respective concentration in a sample and summing these products results in a TCDD equivalents of the sample. In October 2022, the WHO convened an expert panel which reevaluated the 2005 WHO TEFs for chlorinated DLC’s. Methods: A systematic review approach was used to incorporate newly published relative potency (REP) data to the 2006 REP database (Haws et al 2006), resulting in an almost doubling of the database. In addition, the present REP database includes more meta data from the published studies. A quantitative weighting scheme, consistent with informal qualitative weighting approaches employed by previous WHO panels, was developed (Wikoff et al 2023) and identified 6 study criteria: Study type; Study model; Pharmacokinetics; REP derivation quality; Endpoint; REP derivation method. A workflow was developed that employed machine-learning based quality weighting of REPs, Bayesian dose-response modeling of the data, and a Bayesian meta-analysis of these data, resulting in a congener-specific BestEstimate TEF (BE-TEF) (Ring et al 2023). Results: BE-TEFs were derived for all DLC’s that have an assigned WHO 2005 TEF value using the machine learning process and the Bayesian methodology. The panel critically evaluated these calculations in addition to evaluating experimental studies included in the database. The Panel recommended the BE-TEFs as the 2022 WHO-TEFs for all chlorinated DLCs except for the mono-ortho PCBs. The panel recommended to keep the 2005 WHO-TEF values for mono-ortho PCBs due to their limited and heterogenous data. For most DLC’s, the BE-TEFs are less than a ½ log different than the 2005 values and much of this difference attributed to the ½ log10 rounding that was assigned for the 2005 WHO-TEFs. Congeners whose BE-TEFs fall outside of ½ log difference are 1,2,3,4,6,7,8- HpCDD, OCDD, 1,2,3,4,7,8,9-HpCDF, OCDF, PCB81, and PCB169. The 2022 WHO-TEFs are decreased for many DLC’s, particularly PCB 126, 1,2,3,7,8- PeCDD and 2,3,4,7,8-PeCDF. The impact of these decreases for several human food products indicates that the total TEQs decreases by approximately half using the 2022 WHO-TEFs compared with the 2005 values. Conclusions: Earlier WHO panels employed expert judgement and consensus-based assignment of TEF values. The present effort is a significant advancement in that it employed an update to the 2006 REP database, a consensus-based weighting scheme, a Bayesian dose response modeling and meta-analysis to derive “Best-Estimate” TEFs. This new workflow provides a transparent and reproducible approach that results in a quantitative assessment of the congener-specific potencies with uncertainty estimates. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nor the U.S. National Institutes of Health.