Expanding httk to model military population and exposures
The modern battlefield is consistently evolving, and the USAF Force Health Protection program must account for new technologies and chemical threats. While much progress has been made in the development of computational methods for predicting public health risk, the warfighter is expected to experience exposures under conditions that are substantially different from those experienced by the general U.S. population. Thus, USAF Predictive Risk Team (PRT) is evaluating the utility of existing models for operational exposure scenarios and modifying existing models when necessary.
The Air Force population differs from the general U.S. population with respect to age and gender distribution. PRT constructed an approach to use published demographic data (Mullenger and Zehner, 2020) to customize the httk pipeline to adequately model Air Force population. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to generate 48 anthropometric characteristics that closely resemble the USAF population. Upon completion, an analysis was compiled to compare previous oral-equivalent doses for the general population to those derived for the military. This pipeline is being used as a foundation to perform a high throughput risk analysis on military-relevant chemicals and will continue to be expanded as necessary as the population changes in the future. Additional areas for development in 2024 include consideration of occupational and acute dosing scenarios and physiological changes due to extreme environments.