[AUCTeX] Reloading bibtex environment variables within emacs

[Damian]

Hello,

I modified the BIBINPUTS variable so that bibtex can find my .bib
files. So reloading the bash configuration (via 'source ~/.bashrc') I
got bibtex working from the terminal.

Now the question is, how can I make emacs to reload this variable as
well so that I don't get an error when I run bibtex within the editor.

Thanks in advance,
Damian.