Challenges and Perspectives of Tier 1 Exposure Assessment - ETEAM Conference Summary Report

摘要

Generic Tier 1 exposure tools are currently widely used for chemical safety assessments under REACH. The risk assessment under REACH follows a tiered approach in which the first tier should provide a conservative (i.e., protective) system that can discriminate between substances in scenarios of some concern and those which are not. Several 1st tier exposure models such as ECETOC TRA, MEASE, EMKG-EXPO-TOOL, Stoffenmanager and RISKOFDERM are recommended by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) for estimating occupational exposure. However, none of these models have been extensively validated during their development. The German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) has therefore initiated and sponsored a comprehensive Evaluation of the Tier 1 Exposure Assessment Models (ETEAM). Carried out by the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM), Edinburgh, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine (FhG ITEM), Hannover, the ETEAM project was intended to characterise the different REACH Tier 1 exposure assessment models in terms of their validity, scope of application, reliability and user-friendliness. An international Advisory Board has provided scientific advice to the project and made available workplace exposure data for use in the external validation process.