A bold new direction for environmental health research

The biotechnology revolution has opened new opportunities for addressing cu rrent inadequacies in decision making regarding environmental health. Strat egic investments need to be made (1) to develop high-throughput technologie s that could accelerate toxicity testing and generate a mechanistic underst anding of toxicity, (2) to incorporate individual susceptibility into risk assessments, and (3) to establish a rational basis for testing and regulato ry decision making. New initiatives of the National Institute of Environmen tal Health Sciences, including the Environmental Genome Project and the Tox icogenomics Center, are discussed.