Targeted Risk Assessment: TRA Tool Steering Team

Introduction

ECETOC initiated its targeted risk assessment (TRA) activity in 2001 and the first public version (v1) of the TRA exposure model was made available in 2004. Since then the TRA tool has continued to evolve and continues to attract a lot of attention both inside and outside Europe for chemicals regulation. More than 80% of the CSAs (Chemical Safety Assessments) submitted in the first two rounds of REACH registrations have been based on the TRA.

With this continued interest ECETOC has established a TRA Steering Group to define, manage and lead how the TRA will be developed into the medium to long term. The purpose of this group is to scope options (which may entail targeted consultation with key interest groups); initiate a discussion among stakeholders (including potentially those outside Europe); and finally to develop and execute a plan.

Practically the TRA is subdivided as follows:

• TRA Steering Team’s aims: Develop the overall strategy, set priorities, organise the work, liaise & maintain dialogue with ECHA and relevant stakeholders
• TRA TF Worker subgroup’s aims: To conduct a review of literature of external validation studies on the TRA Worker tool version 3 and develop a curated database. The first manuscript called ‘An In-depth Comparison of Publicly Available Measurement Data Sets With Modelled Estimates of Occupational Inhalation Exposure to Chemicals’ has been published in February 2023. A technical report called ‘Systematic review of published studies of ECETOC TRA Worker exposure predictions’ has been also produced and can he viewed on the ECETOC website here. A second report, as well as an updated TRA Worker tool, is expected to be published in Q3 2023.
• TRA TF Consumer subgroup’s aims: To develop a manuscript addressing how to deal with infrequent less than lifetime exposures. The manuscript called ‘An assessment of the ECETOC TRA Consumer tool performance as a screening level tool’ has been published in January 2023.
• TRA TF Environment subgroup : Current involvement in the ECHA Chesar update project, a state of the science literature review on assessment of humans exposed via the environment, and a collaborative project with RIVM and ECCC on the SimpleTreat model.