CINCINNATI, Ohio, September 13, 2007 / -- Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) is pleased to announce a peer consultation meeting to review a proposed new methodology to predict the toxicity of untested petroleum substances based on the relationship between polycyclic aromatic compound (PAC) profile of petroleum substances and select mammalian toxicity responses. The meeting will be held on October 8 and 9, 2007, at the Northern Kentucky University METS Center, which is located two miles from the Cincinnati, Ohio, airport.
The meeting will be open to the public to attend in person or to participate via a webcast using the Internet. The webcast will include audio, video, and synchronized presentation materials and will require a high-speed Internet connection. In addition, interested persons may submit technical comments by September 24 for the peer consultation panel's consideration. All attendees, including webcast attendees, must pre-register.
More information and on-line registration are available at http://www.tera.org/peer/API/APIWelcome.htm.
Background
The goal of the proposed methodology is to predict dose levels of untested substances that will produce a pre-defined change for selected repeat-dose and developmental toxicity endpoints. This work has been conducted by the PAC Analysis Task Group of the Petroleum HPV Testing Group. The Petroleum HPV Testing Group is a consortium of manufacturers who are funding a voluntary data disclosure and toxicity testing program on certain petroleum substances in response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's HPV Chemical Challenge Program. The American Petroleum Institute (API) manages the consortium activities. The Petroleum HPV Testing Group has submitted test plans to the U.S. EPA for 13 petroleum substances categories. For six of these, a relationship between toxicity and PAC content was asserted or implied.
The objective of this peer consultation is for a diverse group of appropriate experts to review the approaches and conclusions presented in the sponsor's documents and to provide opinions on the merit and adequacy of the proposed methods. The PAC Analysis Task Group has prepared two documents and supporting materials for the panel's review and discussion that are available on the meeting web page. The documents include:
Volume 1: A Description of U.S. EPA HPV Chemical Challenge Program and the Petroleum HPV Testing Group's Strategy for Closure of Those Categories of Petroleum Substances that Contain Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds, and
Volume 2: An Investigation into the Relationship between the Polycyclic Aromatic Compound Content and Acute, Repeat-Dose, Developmental, and Reproductive Toxicity of Petroleum Substances.
For more information, contact Jacqueline Patterson by telephone 513-521-7426 or e-mail patterson@tera.org.