Task Forces
Moving persistence (P) assessments into the 21st Century: Developing a new paradigm to assess degradation potential of chemicals
Background
Recent progress in the scientific understanding of the underlying processes of persistence and degradation has provided an opportunity to develop an improved framework and best practices...
Exposure-based adaptations Task Force
Background
Within the REACH legal text there are 2 ways to adapt the standard testing requirements; column 2 of annexes VII to X, and Annex XI. Annex XI contains 3 potential options – testing not...
Persistent chemicals and water resources protection
Background
Several initiatives end-2017 and 2018 on identification of substances of concern to drinking water resources.
ECETOC role in supporting the development of a science-based framework to...
Special T4 Task Force
Why?
A potential connection between reduction of thyroid hormones, in particular thyroxine (T4), and impaired neuronal (mental) development in children is being discussed. This debate has caused un...
DNEL Derivation Guidance
The ECETOC DNEL Derivation Guidance (2010) – which provides the technical underpinnings by which many/most of industry DNELs (derived no-effect levels) were developed in 2010 and post-2010 – are u...
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 produ...
Geospatial approaches to increasing the ecological relevance of chemical risk assessments
Aim
The overall aim of this task force is to review and inform on the use of geo-referenced data to increase the environmental relevance of chemical risk assessment. The task force aims are complem...
Endocrine Disruption
In December 2016, in response to the ‘Outline of draft Guidance Document for the implementation of the hazard-based criteria to identify endocrine disruptors’, published by ECHA and EFSA in Dece...
Guidance Document for the Extended One-Generation Reproduction Toxicity Study (OECD Test Guideline 443) (EOGRT)
Terms of Reference
Review the available literature on the sensitivity and specificity of including a second generation in reproductive toxicity testing.
Define, if possible, the triggers to...
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...
Freshwater Ecotoxicity as an environmental impact category to guide the selection of chemical-based products
November 2016
Publication of Task Force findings as Technical Report no.127: Freshwater ecotoxicity as an impact category in life cycle assessment
In a Nutshell:
Freshwater is a vital compo...
Approaches for read-across in chemical risk assessment
Outcome
Technical Report no.109: High information content technologies in support of read-across in chemical risk assessment (Published Decempber 2010).
Read-across exploits information on struc...
Guidance on assessment factors to derive a DNEL
Outcome
In the REACH Technical Guidance Document, chapter R.8 ‘Characterisation of dose -response for human health’ proposes a tiered and systematic approach for the delineation of DNEL (and DM...
Guidance for assessing the impact of mixtures of chemicals in the aquatic environment
Outcome
The potential risk from combinations of chemicals in the environment has recently moved up the scientific, regulatory and political agenda as a result of the increasing concern about the po...
Risk assessment approaches for PBT/vPvB or POPs
Outcome
The Task Force resulted in the Technical Report no.112: Refined Approaches for Risk Assessment of PBT/vPvB Chemicals (Published October 2011)
Many national, or regional, regulations and...
Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds
Technical Report no.123: Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds (Published December 2013)
Summary
This report seeks to improve the capability to estimate the bioavailabilit...
Aquatic toxicity and bioaccumulation of sparingly soluble manufactured particulate substances
Background
In 1996 ECETOC published Monograph No. 26 which reviewed the difficulties of sparingly soluble substances in aquatic toxicity assays. This work helped establish the current paradigm in a...
Exploring community-based environmental hazard assessments of mixtures based on MOA-based approaches
Background
There is an increasing awareness of the need to complement single substance assessments with the assessment of mixtures. Mode of action considerations have been proposed to derive enviro...
Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) focusing on endocrine active chemicals
Background
There are currently many intense global activities on adverse outcome pathways (AOP). Much of this activity is focused on endocrine disruption (ED). There is a risk that AOPs will be use...
Adapting Simple Treat for simulating behaviour of chemical substances
Background
In the EU the fate of chemicals in wastewater treatment is currently simulated with SimpleTreat 3.1. RIVM is currently revising SimpleTreat 3.1 for simulating municipal wastewater treatm...
Refined Approaches for Risk Assessment of PBT/vPvB Chemicals
Environmental Sciences Manager Malyka Galay Burgos
Administrative Assistant Sonia Pulinckx
The findings of the task force were published in October 2011 as ECETOC Technical Report No.112; "Refined...
Poorly Soluble Particles / Lung Overload
Chemicals Programme Manager Henk Vrijhof
Administrative Assistant Sonia Pulinckx
Background
The majority of data on respiratory effects of inhaled poorly soluble particles (PSP) stems from rat...
Category approaches, read-across, (Q)SAR
Health Sciences Manager Christa Hennes
Administrative Assistant Christine Yannakas
The task force completed its work in 2012; the Technical Report No. 116 can be downloaded here.
Categorisation,...
Assessment and evaluation of risks resulting from dermal exposure to chemicals
Completed task force: The task force published its findings in March 2013 as Technical Report no.119: Evaluation of systemic health effects following dermal exposure to chemicals
Health Sciences Ma...