Assessing the human health and environmental safety of polymers
Why?
Polymers pose technical/scientific challenges for risk assessment. Polymers are versatile and complex, and generally not present as mono-constituent substances, but as complex polymer products consisting of the polymeric substance (polymeric macromolecules), intentionally added substances (IAS; e.g.stabilisers) and non-intentionally added substances (NIAS; e.g. impurities).
Conventional risk assessment approaches may not apply to the majority of polymers.
Objectives
- Considering existing risk assessment approaches (e.g. food safety regulation, EU Technical Guidance Document/REACH Guidance, international polymer assessment frameworks), develop a conceptual framework for human health and environmental safety assessment of polymers
- Liaise with stakeholders and contribute to relevant initiatives.
Timeline and Deliverables
Work started in September 2023 and the Task Force published the following Technical Reports from 2019 – 2021 ((complete reports are available for download from the column on the right)):
- TR 133-1 in May 2019 (Conceptual Framework for Polymer Risk Assessment (CF4Polymers))
- TR 133-2 in March 2020 (Applicability of analytical tools, test methods and models)
- TR 133-3 in September 2021 (Case-studies putting the CF4Polymers into practice)
The Task Force actively contributed during 2020 - 2022 to the CARACAL subgroup (CASG) on Polymers.
A manuscript on a Three-tiered approach for standard information requirements for polymers requiring registration under REACH (Otte JC and Hollnagel HM et al., 2023) was published in October 2023.
- ECETOC-Polymer-SIR-Poster-SETAC2024_Final
- ECETOC-Polymer-RA_consideration2024_Final
- Manuscript on SIR
- First report on the ECETOC Conceptual Framework for Polymer Risk Assessment (CF4Polymers)
- Second report on applicability of analytical tools, test methods and models for polymer risk assessment
- Third report featuring case-studies putting the CF4Polymers into practice
- ECETOC-TR133-1CF4Polymers
- ECETOC-Polymer-SIR-Poster-SETAC2023
- Watch the “Considerations and Examples” presentation
- Watch the “Putting the CF4Polymers into practice” presentation
- ECETOC-Polymer-Case-Studies-Poster-SETAC2022-final
- ECETOC-Polymer-TF-SETAC-poster_April-2021