The Society of Toxicology (SOT) Component Groups (Regional Chapters, Special Interest Groups, and Specialty Sections) host many webinars throughout the year. Webinars are an effective distance-learning method intended to impart scientific knowledge to members of their group as well as the SOT membership at large. These webinars are just one of the many benefits of SOT membership.
Upcoming webinars for November 2016 are listed below.
Women in Toxicology Special Interest Group (WIT)
Topic: WIT—Achieving Work Life Balance across Career Stages
Date and Time: Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm Eastern Time
Event address and registration for attendees
Individuals in every stage of their careers (from first-year graduate student to senior toxicologist) strive to achieve a balance between work and non-work activities. Although many have heard the phrase “work-life balance,” there are no universal attainment criteria (i.e., where is the optimal balance) or attainment metrics (i.e., how does one know if they have reached optimal balance?).
Speakers:
Elena E Hernandez Ramon, MD, PhD
Pre-medical advisor/Scientific Program Manager, Office of Intramural Training & Education, National Institutes of Health
Linda S. Birnbaum, PhD, DABT, ATS
Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program
In this webinar, you will hear what work-life balance (WLB) means to expert toxicologists Dr. Elena Hernandez-Ramon and Dr. Linda Birnbaum, and how WLB has evolved and changed over their life and career stages. They also will share situations or decisions that have helped or hindered WLB and offer suggestions for flexible compromises when trying to create WLB within your own situations. Webinar attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions following the speaker presentations.
Registration is required.
Occupational and Public Health Specialty Section (OPHSS)
Topic: Association between Arsenic Exposure from Drinking Water & Longitudinal Change in Blood Pressure among HEALS Cohort Participants
Date and Time: Friday, November 18, 2016, 12:00 pm–1:30 pm Eastern Time
Event address and registration for attendees
Background: Cross-sectional studies have shown associations between arsenic exposure and prevalence of high blood pressure; however, studies examining the relationship of arsenic exposure with longitudinal changes in blood pressure are lacking.
Method: We evaluated associations of arsenic exposure in relation to longitudinal change in blood pressure in 10,853 participants in the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS). Arsenic was measured in well water and in urine samples at baseline and in urine samples every 2 years after baseline. Mixed-effect models were used to estimate the association of baseline well and urinary creatinine-adjusted arsenic with annual change in blood pressure during follow-up (median, 6.7 years).
Result: In the HEALS population, the median water arsenic concentration at baseline was 62 μg/L. Individuals in the highest quartile of baseline water arsenic or urinary creatinine-adjusted arsenic had a greater annual increase in systolic blood pressure compared with those in the reference group (β = 0.48 mmHg/year; 95% CI: 0.35, 0.61, and β = 0.43 mmHg/year; 95% CI: 0.29, 0.56 for water arsenic and urinary creatinine-adjusted arsenic, respectively) in fully adjusted models. Likewise, individuals in the highest quartile of baseline arsenic exposure had a greater annual increase in diastolic blood pressure for water arsenic and urinary creatinine-adjusted arsenic (β = 0.39 mmHg/year; 95% CI: 0.30, 0.49, and β = 0.45 mmHg/year; 95% CI: 0.36, 0.55, respectively) compared with those in the lowest quartile.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that long-term arsenic exposure may accelerate age-related increases in blood pressure. These findings may help explain associations between arsenic exposure and cardiovascular disease.
Registration is required.
Hispanic Organization of Toxicologists Special Interest Group (HOT)
This webinar will be in Spanish.
Topic: Experimental & Biological Factors Influencing Our Observations in Toxicological Assays
Date and Time: Friday, November 18, 2016, 5:00 pm–6:00 pm Eastern Time
Event address and registration for attendees
Pyrethroids are pesticides with high insecticidal activity that alter nervous system function in target and non-target species by disrupting neuronal excitability. The accumulated evidence consistently shows that this action is followed by various neurological alterations. Along the last 30 years, there were some equivocal results regarding the potency of pyrethroids in rats and mice. The estimation of absolute and relative potencies in animal studies is an important step in pesticide risk assessment. A comprehensive critical review of nearly 100 pyrethroid studies was published in 2013. This review focused on the influence of test material and dosing conditions, testing conditions, animal model, and other determinants such as testing room temperature. Variations in the severity of the neurotoxicity observed in adult rats under laboratory-controlled conditions was found to be mostly explained by the influence of biological factors such as species and age, test material features such as chemical structure, stereochemistry and vehicle, and dosing conditions such as route of exposure and dose-volume. The interplay between all effective factors might theoretically result in up to ~103-fold variation in the benchmark levels (i.e., NOAEL, LOAEL, BMD, LD50) estimated in animal studies. This webinar presentation will highlight why safe levels of pesticides are determined only after a sufficiently advanced database for the hazardous chemical of interest is obtained, i.e., using the pyrethroid case as a proof-of-concept.
Registration is required.