ECHA’s (the European Chemicals Agency’s) second edition of its evolving documentation on scientific areas in chemical risk assessment that present urgent regulatory challenges has been made available. This 38-page document, published in November 2023, highlights a number of specific research-hungry fields within four target areas.
- For providing protection against the most harmful chemicals: NAM (new approach methodology) development for addressing neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity and endocrine disruption endpoints;
- For addressing chemical pollution in the natural environment: NAM development for addressing bioaccumulation and environmental exposure and for determining sensitive species on a chemical-specific basis; also data generation for assessing the sensitivity of non-bee pollinators to biocidal active substances;
- For reducing reliance on animal testing: NAM development for read-across under REACH and for traditional toxicology endpoints; validation of the predictivity (with respect to short-term fish toxicity) of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) test no.s 249 and 236 (fish gill cell line toxicity assay and fish embryo toxicity test, respectively); also validity-testing the application of an in vitro / Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) approach for predicting chronic fish toxicity;
- For “improved availability on chemical data”: polymers and micro- and nano-sized materials are highlighted (as a result of their intrinsic complexity with respect to definition and / or functional behaviour), as is a need to improve high-throughput screening techniques for better control with respect to regulatory compliance within the EU.
The full publication on Key Areas of Regulatory Challenge can be accessed on the ECHA website.
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