Vision of a near future: Bridging the human health-environment divide. Toward an integrated strategy to understand mechanisms across species for chemical safety assessment.

There is a growing recognition that application of mechanistic approaches to understand cross-species shared molecular targets and pathway conservation in the context of hazard characterization, provide significant opportunities in risk assessment (RA) for both human health and environmental safety. Specifically, it has been recognized that a more comprehensive and reliable understanding of similarities and differences in biological pathways across a variety of species will better enable cross-species extrapolation of potential adverse toxicological effects. Ultimately, this would also advance the generation and use of mechanistic data for both human health and environmental RA.