“Mechanistic effect models for ecological risk assessment of chemicals”

The
general aim of this advisory group is to explore and evaluate the
benefit of mechanistic effect modelling for the risk assessment of
chemicals in Europe. This will be done by establishing a forum for
better communication and cooperation of scientists in academia,
industry and government working on or with mechanistic modelling to
analyse and predict effects of chemicals on organisms, populations and
communities.

The
group will deal with models to analyse and predict effects of chemicals
on organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems in aquatic, soil
and terrestrial environments. The term ecological modelling is avoided
here, because it is often used for population, community, food web and
ecosystem models, but the group will also consider models to describe
and predict effects on the level of the single organism e.g.
toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic models (TK/TD), dynamic energy budget
models (DEB), biotic ligand models (BLM).
Empirical statistical
models (e.g. dose-response functions, species sensitivity
distributions, multivariate models of community structure) and QSARs
will not be the focus of the group.

Objectives

• to promote the use of mechanistic effect models,
  and facilitate communication, amongst modellers, regulators and risk
  assessors. This includes both informing modellers about the needs of
  the regulatory process and encouraging the regulators to be explicit
  about what they need to know;
• to build a network of people developing, using and evaluating such models for the risk assessment of chemicals in Europe;
• to provide an overview on ongoing activities in the area via the website and an e-mail distribution list;
• to provide information on public data sources, models, and modelling tools;
• to develop an online glossary on related terms (SETAC Forum / SETAC Wikipedia);
• to organise session(s) at the SETAC Europe annual meetings;
• to organise SETAC short courses on mechanistic effect models if possible;
• to organise (alone or as one partner) or actively participate in expert workshops; 
• to organise or participate in workshops to teach modelling, model use and model evaluation;
• to communicate with related Europe and World AGs, e.g. on bioaccumulation, ecological risk assessment, exposure modelling; 
• to be actively involved in the development of
  guidance documents on the use of modelling in ecological risk
  assessment in support of European legislation.

Background

Mechanistic
effect models have been applied to ecotoxicological questions for over
25 years now. However, their use in regulatory risk assessment has been
very limited over the years. Their importance seems to be increasing as
has been stated especially in the risk assessment of pesticides under
the European Directive 91/414: modelling was mentioned as a valuable
higher tier tool in the SETAC workshops AMPERE on mesocosm tests (2007)
and AMRAP on macrophyte testing (2008). The ELINK workshop (2007)
focussed on the problem of extrapolation from usually simple exposure
patterns in ecotoxicological tests to the complex exposure scenarios
predicted by the exposure models used now. In the ELINK working group
on tools for extrapolation, different types of models are discussed for
the potential use to solve this problem. Finally, the LEMTOX workshop
(2007) was organised especially to bring together international experts
from Europe, Japan and North America to discuss pros and cons of
ecological (here usually population) models for pesticide risk
assessment.
Recent reviews have investigated the state of the art
and pointed out the need for standardisation of model approaches. This
requires concerted actions with all stakeholders involved.
Nevertheless,
the use of such models is not restricted to pesticides and the
following main application areas are generally seen in the framework of
the Europeaen regulation of chemicals (plant protection products,
biozides, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals):

1. clarify ecological relevance of observed effects (usually on the
level of individuals) in standard laboratory  tests to the population
level (e.g. relevance of effects on the reproduction of fish for the
population level);
2. extrapolation of effects from a tested
exposure to other, untested exposure patterns (e.g. from the tested
one-peak exposure in a mesocosm to the multiple peak exposure in the
field due to multiple drift, run-off and drainage entries);
3. extrapolating
recovery processes (e.g. from intrinsic recovery tested in a mesocosm
study to recovery including recolonisation in an agricultural landscape
or from observed effects and recovery of species experimentally tested
to effects and recovery of untested species with different life cycle
types);
4. analysis and prediction of possible indirect effects in communities (by the use of dynamic community or ecosystem models).

Membership

The Advisory Group is open to any
interested scientists and students. SETAC membership is not required,
but may facilitate access to SETAC scientific activities (e.g.,
short-courses, symposia, etc.) at preferential rates. The organisation
of the work is done by a steering committee (SC) of up to 12 people
from academia, industry and regulation.

If you are interested you can become member of the
AG by indicating this in you SETAC profile. This will enable you access
to open forum for the MemoRisk AG on the SETAC communities site.

If you are not a SETAC member you can get access to the group’s forum as described on the SETAC communitie site.

Steering Committee

The main task of this steering committee is to bring the advisory group into life and to arganize its activities.

Current steering committee:
• Thomas Preuss (Chair, RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
• Udo Hommen (Chair, Fraunhofer IME, Germany)
• Anne Alix (AFSSA, France)
• Dieter Schäfer (Bayer CropScience, Germany)
• Franz Streissl (EFSA, EU)
• Melissa Reed (PSD, UK)
• Paul van den Brink (Alterra and Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
• Pernille Thorbek (Syngenta, UK)
• Peter Chapman (Unilever, UK)
• Roman Ashauer (EAWAG, Switzerland)
• Valery Forbes (University of Roskilde, Denmark)
• Virginie Ducrot (INRA, France)