Effective risk assessment and management are often hampered by a lack of reliable exposure data. The probabilistic exposure assessment approach takes into account individual variations in exposure, and thus, overly conservative estimates based on worst case scenarios can be avoided. The aim was to provide reliable information on the intake of non-dioxinlike (NDL) and dioxinlike PCBs, PCDDs and PCDFs in breastfed infants and their mothers during 2000-2006. Hence, a probabilistic model was developed to estimate the exposure and compare it with a deterministic exposure assessment approach. The estimated probabilistic mean intake in 1, 3 and 6 months old infants was 44, 31 and 17 pg total-TEQ/kg bw per day, and 418, 294 and 165 ng NDL-PCBs/kg bw per day, respectively. Intakes differed up to 41% between the upper-bound percentiles of the probabilistic approach and the deterministic worst case scenario approach, whereas no difference in mean values was observed between the two approaches. The median cumulative intake increased during 6 months of breastfeeding to 20 ng total-TEQ and 352 μg NDL-PCBs. There was a significant temporal decrease in infant exposure during 2000-2006 (30%). Less than 4% of the mothers had an intake exceeding the TDI of 2 pg TEQ/kg bw per day (median: 1.2 pg total-TEQ/kg bw). To conclude, by use of a probabilistic approach and biomonitoring data we were able to calculate reliable estimates of infant exposure to environmental pollutants and the daily intakes of the nursing mothers using the same data.
The Royal Academy of Sciences was an important organization in eighteenth-century Sweden. It brought together scientists and scholars contributing to a wide spectrum of areas, encompassing nature as well as society. But it also maintained close ties to the elite and the political establishment. The academy formed part of the institutional landscape of power and functioned as a consultive body and an arena for the upper echelons of the Swedish realm. The monograph sheds light on the political and economic outlook of the Royal Academy of Sciences during the period 1739–1792 against the background of its intimate connections to the ruling stratum. Not least the Hat Party, which dominated the Swedish political scene during the Age of Liberty, and the autocratic King Gustav III. The study shows that the members of the academy overall gravitated towards traditional viewpoints and that their conceptualizations of society were substantially affected by their interactions with the power holders. While some fellows offered new ideas in line with an increasing contemporary emphasis on spontaneous societal development and the capability of individuals to act responsibly on their own accord, such notions were by no means prevalent. Moreover, the book demonstrates that neither the academy nor its members constituted a passive tool for the elite and the powers that be. Rather, they engaged in self-promotion by attributing themselves a crucial role in the project of general improvement they envisioned and added to.
This article interrogates how the entangled concepts of civilisation and savagery were envisioned and brought into play in the globetrotting Linnaean disciple Anders Sparrman's (1748-1820) southern African travel account, how far and along which lines the dichotomy between them was tempered and challenged, and to what extent exposure to a foreign continent encouraged critical and destabilising introspection. The analysis deals with his representations of the inhabitants of Africa in the form of colonists, slaves, and Khoisan, as well as with his renderings of the Europeans. The investigation sheds further light on the erudite construction and employment of 'civilisation' and 'savagery' at the threshold between early modern and modern. It also provides a fresh take on Sparrman himself, while addressing the scholarly debate on his human-related conceptions and proposing a new approach to them.
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