Over the last decade, alternatives assessment practice has evolved, and chemical hazard assessment methods are beginning to address hazards at the product-level. However, there is much to learn about these methods. Are they consistent and aligned? What are the current limitations? What data and tools are currently available or not to support product-level assessments and substitution decisions? These questions form the basis of a 3-part workshop series to advance methods for product-level alternative assessments.
This workshop series is a collaborative effort of Association for the Advancement of Alternatives Assessment (A4) and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Division of Translational Toxicology and its Safe and Sustainable Alternatives Program.
Each workshop will begin with formative presentations on different methods to help launch a discussion with attending workshop participants regarding the merits and limitations of various approaches to support decision-making in an alternatives assessment context. The workshops are designed to be heavily discussion oriented to utilize expertise in the growing A4 community of practice to support identifying needs and opportunities to align product-level hazard assessment methods for use in alternatives assessments. This 3-part workshop series is intended for professionals in government agencies, companies, NGOs, and academia that work on chemical substitution topics, and those from similar sectors that have knowledge about methods and tools to support the evaluation of mixtures that could have applicability for supporting chemical substitution decisions.
Understanding how mixtures are being evaluated in other aligned fields that are transferable to the evaluation and substitution decision context of product-level alternatives assessments.
Moderator: Elaine Cohen Hubal, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Brief highlights from Workshop 1: Molly Jacobs, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Formative Topic Presentations:
Methods for Assessing Formulated Personal Care Products and Considerations for Botanicals
– Amy Roe, Proctor and Gamble Co.
Hazard Contextualization with PFAS-Containing AFFF Mixtures and its in vivo Translation for Decision Frameworks
– Stephen Ferguson, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences
Utilizing a Range of Novel Methods to Characterize the Endocrine Disrupting Effects of Chemical Mixtures
– Chris Kaossotis, Wayne State University
Facilitated Plenary Discussion