News
06.03.2013

ECETOC Work on Risk Assessment Wins Prestigious Prize

ECETOC‘s work on the identification and evaluation of endocrine disrupting chemicals has been recognised by the American Society of Toxicology (SOT) whose Risk Assessment Specialty Section (RASS) awarded it “Best Published Paper Advancing the Science of Risk Assessment‘.

The award-winning ECETOC paper, “Risk assessment of endocrine active chemicals: Identifying chemicals of regulatory concern‘, provides a science-based set of criteria to be used in the evaluation and regulation of substances with endocrine disrupting properties.

This paper was published by an ECETOC task force established in 2008 to provide scientific input on the evaluation criteria for endocrine disrupters. In chemicals legislation today, including REACH, the fundamental criteria to define endocrine disrupting properties are not defined. The ECETOC task force recommends the use of key scientific criteria including chemicals‘ potency, specificity and severity of effects, relevance of mode of action of toxicity and negligible exposure etc.

The paper‘s lead author Dr Remi Bars said, ‘This award reinforces the importance of considering all available scientific information including hazard assessment and exposure consideration to properly regulate chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties.“

Dr Alan Poole, Secretary General of ECETOC said, ‘We are grateful that the Society Of Toxicology has recognised the significance of the ECETOC task force‘s contribution to the risk management of hormone active agents. I congratulate the task force on their outstanding work.“

The paper was published in the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Journal in 2012 and can be accessed here: bit.ly/ecetoc-art-2012-raeac. It builds upon an earlier paper published in 2011 in the same journal.