Developing New Approaches to Assessing Risks to Human Health from Chemicals. Dr. Michael Topping, Chemicals Policy Division, Health and Safety Executive, 2 Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HS UK, telephone +44 (0) 171 717 6247, fax +44 (0) 171 717 6190, e-mail michael.topping@hse.gov.uk
In 1996 the UK government departments involved in the assessment of risks to human health from chemicals started a new initiative. The aim was to review current practice for managing risks to health from chemicals and in the longer term to promote the development and validation of innovative approaches to generate better estimates of risk and improved risk assessment procedures.
The presentation will summarise the progress that has been made. At the outset it was realised that there are important, though justifiable, differences between the risk assessment schemes used by departments, often reflecting requirements of EU Directives or other international agreements. To articulate the approaches used across Government a review, Risk assessment approaches used by UK Government for evaluation human health effects of chemicals has been completed and will shortly be published.
Three workshops have been held to address key issues. These brought together regulatory toxicologists and policy makers from government and experts from academia and industry and resulted in a series of recommendations aimed at improving risk assessment procedures. The topics covered were; how population subgroups were accounted for in chemical risk assessment; the use of physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling as a risk assessment tool and exposure assessment. A final workshop on dealing with uncertainty involved risk assessors from government departments considering a number of case studies. A report from each workshop will be published.
Recommendations from the workshops and the review of approaches will used to draw up an action plan for future work and identify research priorities. The aim is for international consortia to be brought together to fund research. In the longer term the outcomes of the research will be used to promote agreement on improved risk assessment procedures for incorporation into international regulations.
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