Webinar Next Week to Focus on Next-Generation Risk Assessment and Chemical Safety

A webinar to be held next week will focus on “next-generation risk assessment,” or NGRA, and occupational safety assessments of chemicals. The abstract for the webinar describes NGRA as “an exposure-led approach to safety assessment that uses new approach methodologies,” which are intended to reduce or replace animal testing for the purpose of gathering hazard and risk assessment information. Presenters from the company Unilever are set to discuss an occupational-specific NGRA workflow that they developed as well as their findings from a case study in which they set out to make real-world safety decisions regarding the chemical sodium-2-hydroxyethane sulfonate. According to the webinar’s abstract, NGRA “is not currently implemented in occupational safety assessments” under REACH, the EU’s regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals.

“Application of NGRA has been largely restricted to assessments of consumer use of cosmetics,” the abstract explains. “Contrastingly, a large number of worker/occupational safety assessments are underpinned by toxicological studies using experimental animals, hence occupational safety assessment represents an area that would benefit from increasing application of NGRA to safety decision making.”

The event, presented by the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology and the European Society for Toxicology In Vitro, will be held on July 24 from 11 a.m. to noon ET. Scheduled presenters include Adam Wood, risk assessor at Unilever, and Steve Gutsell, the company’s head of regulatory science for chemical safety. Individuals who are interested in attending may register at no cost via Zoom.