The third symposium “Environmental Toxicology in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany – Interdisciplinary Research Activities in Toxicology, Statistics, Hygiene and Medicine” was held in Dortmund, Germany, in May 2015. Dortmund, a center of the coal, iron, and steel industries in the past, is located in the highly industrialized federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2010, the very high exposures of workers to polychlorinated biphenyls in a transformer recycling plant located in Dortmund hit the headlines and initiated a wide range of investigations including a long-term follow-up of 300 occupationally and environmentally exposed persons. Since 2006, the contamination of agricultural land by illegal application of industrial waste containing high amounts of perfluorinated compounds in the nearby Sauerland, a rural area in south-eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, has been a major issue of general health concern. Thus, Dortmund was particularly suited to host a symposium addressing a broad spectrum of different aspects of environmental research. On the occasion of this symposium, scientists from almost all groups in this state involved in various fields of interdisciplinary environmental research convened for the third time.
The symposium provided an opportunity to present papers on many facets of environmental toxicology. A total of 52 contributions mainly focused on the following topics:
Exposures to perfluorinated compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls.
Other relevant chemically or physically defined environmental exposures and their impact on population groups.
Odors as indicators of low-level exposure.
Statistical aspects in toxicology and environmental health.
Genetically based susceptibility factors for diseases.
In vitro approaches in environmental toxicology research.
Participants, authors, and guest editors of this symposium would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Professor Sam Kacew, who made this special issue possible. The guest editors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Faculty of Statistics at TU Dortmund University.