Science Strategy

ECETOC’s approach

ECETOC believes that by identifying developing issues at their nascence, the chemicals industry will be better placed to undertake the appropriate scientific initiatives. An over-arching science strategy, ratified in 2007, now serves to guide ECETOC’s science programme and marks the beginning of an issues, rather than activity-based approach.

What does it involve?

The premise of this strategy is that ECETOC plays an integral role in science in society. Its particular remit is to contribute objective scientific evidence to the debate about the role of chemicals in the causality of disease and assure the process of risk assessment of these chemicals.

It does so via the pursuit of the following five broad themes:

1. The presence of chemicals in humans
2. The presence of chemicals in the environment
3. Effects on humans and ecosystems
4. Methods
5. The science of risk assessment.

This science strategy is also used as a basis for working with other stakeholders, such as the academia, regulators, associations and international institutions to ensure that objective scientific evidence is used to provide the highest quality risk assessment of chemical products that minimises wherever possible the use of animals in testing.

Within the framework of the aforementioned five themes, ECETOC pursues the following thirteen strategic science areas.

1 - The presence of chemicals in humans.

	Presence of chemicals in human tissue ECETOC will seek to ensure that the results of biomonitoring studies are placed into appropriate context in the human health risk assessment process.
	Chemicals in indoor air The overall aim of this SSA is to address approaches to assess the impact of chemicals found in indoor air on human health.
	Mixtures The objective is to contribute to the development of a pragmatic, realistic, and science based framework for the risk assessment of chemical mixtures.

2 - The presence of chemicals in the environment

Exposure pathways The presence of chemicals in the environment can be construed to represent a danger to the environment itself and accordingly to human health. This area requires the promotion of an approach which uses sound dose response principles in the evaluation of risk.

3- Effects on humans and ecosystems

	Sensitive sub-populations Certain sub-populations, notably children, may be assumed to be more sensitive than healthy adults. This strategic area is intended to test and explore this hypothesis.
	Reproductive health The overall aim of this SSA is to ensure that the methods and the testing strategy to identify and characterise developmental and reproductive toxicants are appropriate and optimised.
	Biodiversity and ecosystems ECETOC will seek to identify and react to key science issues relevant to global regulatory assessments of chemical impacts on biodiversity of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

4 - Methods

	Intelligent/integrated testing strategies (ITS) The overall aim of this SSA is to contribute to a more effective approach to hazard and risk assessment. This should also support the further development and application of alternative approaches to hazard assessment and thereby improve the workability of REACH. Good ITS approaches can reduce costs and the use of animals while providing best quality data for the risk assessment process.
	‘Omics’ and related technologies The emerging technologies of genomics, proteomics and metabonomics are already available for hazard if not risk evaluation. This area requires industry involvement to ensure that these technologies are used in an appropriate manner.
	Risk assessment of innovation The purpose of this activity is to develop a series of approaches for addressing the health and environmental risk assessment for innovative products.

5 - The science of risk assessment

	Role of chemicals in the causality of disease This strategic area aims to put the presumed associations between chemicals in the environment and disease into its proper scientific perspective.
	Risk, hazard and precaution The precautionary principle can lead to unrealistic worst case assumptions based on an evaluation of hazard. It is important to use all available scientific tools to adequately characterise the real risk. This implies increased emphasis on exposure and dose response information.
	Science in society ECETOC will seek out activities to promote the use of science in EU decision making to enhance the acceptance of science by the general public. Specifically, ECETOC will promote the use of data-based risk assessment.