Use of dose-dependent absorption into target tissues to more accurately predict cancer risk at low oral doses of hexavalent chromium

The mouse dose at the lowest water concentration used in the National Toxicology Program hexavalent chromium (CrVI) drinking water study (NTP, 2008) is about 74,500 times higher than the approximate human dose corresponding to the 35-city geometric mean reported in EWG (2010) and over 1000 times higher than that based on the highest reported tap water concentration. With experimental and environmental doses differing greatly, it is a regulatory challenge to extrapolate high-dose results to environmental doses orders of magnitude lower in a meaningful and toxicologically predictive manner. This seems particularly true for the low-dose extrapolation of results for oral CrVI-induced carcinogenesis since dose-dependent differences in the dose fraction absorbed by mouse target tissues are apparent (Kirman et al., 2012). These data can be used for a straightforward adjustment of the USEPA (2010) draft oral slope factor (SFo) to be more predictive of risk at environmentally-relevant doses. More specifically, the evaluation of observed and modeled differences in the fraction of dose absorbed by target tissues at the point-of-departure for the draft SFo calculation versus lower doses suggests that the draft SFo be divided by a dose-specific adjustment factor of at least an order of magnitude to be less over-predictive of risk at more environmentally-relevant doses.