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 serves to guide ECETOC’s science programme and uses 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 5 broad themes:

Presence of chemicals in humans
Presence of chemicals in the environment
Effects on humans and ecosystems
Methods
Science of risk assessment.

This science strategy is also used as a basis for working with other stakeholders, such as 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.

2011 Revisions to the science strategy

The science strategy has served ECETOC well over the last years, and has been used as a guide for discussing our work programme within the Scientific Committee and with our Member Companies. Since then, new challenges have come up for the chemical industry, both on science and on the regulatory front. Issues are becoming increasingly more complex, but at the same time we are confronted with a diminishing resource of specialists in the industry that can address them. Therefore the Board and the Scientific Committee decided to review ECETOC's strategy, including the science strategy, at the 2010 Annual Technical Meeting.  

Since then the ideas which the meeting produced have been developed by the Board and the Scientific Committee. These include new ways of using the scientific resources at ECETOC's disposal and ways to increase added value for members. The Strategic Science Areas concept has served us well and provided a focus for the Scientific Committee. It has allowed us to monitor the balance of our portfolio of activities and to ensure that areas which were identified as strategic were receiving sufficient attention. After three years in operation it was felt useful to reassess whether these SSA's were still appropriate.

As a result of this analysis, the following decisions were adopted:

1. Sensitive sub-populations will no longer be a separate SSA as it is considered that the area where ECETOC has been most involved, children's health, is covered under reproductive health.
   
2. Indoor air should also no longer be an SSA as we are unable to define clear activities for Task Forces.
   
3. The SSA ‘omics should be merged into testing strategies, as it is now becoming integrated into more mainstream toxicology research, if not yet into any testing requirements.
   
4. The two SSA's entitled ‘Biodiversity and Ecosystems' and ‘Science in Society' were considered important, but the ideas behind them were insufficiently concrete for them to be readily understood by the membership. Further work will be required to give substance to these concepts.

Accordingly, from May 2011, ECETOC pursues the following 10 strategic science areas:

Presence of chemicals in humans.

	Chemicals in human tissue Objective: Ensure that the results of biomonitoring studies are placed into appropriate context within risk assessment to human health.
	Mixtures and co-exposure Objective: Contribute to the development of a pragmatic, realistic, and science-based framework for the risk assessment of chemical mixtures.

 Presence of chemicals in the environment

Assessment of environmental fate and behaviour Objective: Develop the understanding of environmental processes that drive the fate and behaviour of chemicals and the role of these processes in risk assessment.

 Effects in humans and ecosystems

	Reproductive health Objective: Ensure that the methods and the testing strategy to identify and characterise developmental and reproductive toxicants are appropriate and optimised.
	Biodiversity and ecosystems Objective: Identify the key science issues relevant to risk assessment of chemicals in the environment in a way that is relevant to the potential impact on biodiversity of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

 Methods

	Integrated testing strategies Objective: 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 cost and use of animals while providing best quality data for the risk assessment process.
	Risk assessment of nanomaterials Objective: Develop a series of approaches for addressing health and environmental effects of nanomaterials.

 Science of risk assessment

	Role of chemicals in the causality of disease Objective: Put the presumed associations between chemicals in the environment and disease into their proper scientific perspective. The focus is particularly directed towards rigorous methodology in observational epidemiology.
	Risk, hazard and precaution Objective: Take into account all available scientific tools to adequately characterise risk not only based on hazard characteristics but also on exposure data and dose-response considerations.
	Science in society Objective: Improve public confidence in the science of risk assessment and to promote its use in public policy actions. This includes the need to counter the perceptions of bias, vested interest and lack of quality assurance of industry generated data.