Experimental study and mathematical modeling of toxic metals combined action as a scientific foundation for occupational and environmental health risk assessment. A summary of results obtained by the Ekaterinburg research team (Russia)

- Cumulative health risks assessment should be based on toxicology of mixtures.
- Some principal discrepancies between these domains are discussed by the authors.
- While simplification of the theory is inevitable, its vulgarization should be avoided.
- Our contribution to this theory and its practical applications is summarized here.

Assessment of cumulative health risks associated with the widely observed combined effects of two or more metals and their compounds on the organism has the toxicology of mixtures as its scientific basis although there is no full match between such assessment and this basis while some of the contradictions between them are of a fundamental nature. This state of things may be explained not only by simplifications characteristic of the generally recognized methodology of risk assessment but also by extreme complexity of the theory of combined toxicity, the most essential issues of which are considered by authors on the basis of literary and, mostly, their own previously published data.

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