Towards Harmonisation of Implementation of Test Strategies for Chemical Mixtures in Europe

The first EuroMix Stakeholders’ Workshop was held on 18 May 2017 at the Thon Hotel EU in Brussels, Belgium.

This workshop was organised to inform stakeholders on the progress made in the EuroMix project on the test strategy and the tools that will be released for future testing and risk assessment of mixtures. It also aimed to obtain feedback regarding the needs of stakeholders as well as which further steps can be taken to ensure project relevance to them.

In total, 72 participants attended the workshop, 50 stakeholders and 22 representatives from the beneficiaries. The participants came from the European Member States and the associated countries well as the USA, Canada Brazil and Japan.

The programme and presentations of the workshop can be found here.

A few photos from the event can be found here.

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On a daily basis we are exposed to a mixture of multiple chemicals via food intake, inhalation and dermal contact. The risk to human health that may result from this, depends on how the effects of different chemicals in the mixture combine, and whether there is any synergism or antagonism between them. The number of different combinations of chemicals in mixtures is infinite and an efficient test strategy for mixtures is lacking. Furthermore, there is a societal need to reduce animal testing, which is the current practice in safety testing of chemicals.

The EuroMix project will deliver a mixture test strategy and test instruments using novel techniques. The tests will result in data needed for refining future risk assessment of mixtures relevant to different stakeholders. Ultimately, this will provide information for future risk management decisions on the safety of chemicals in mixtures to be taken by the European Commission and the Codex Alimentarius.

More information on the EuroMix concepts and tools can be found in this presentation.

Therefore, we would like to hear your opinion on the tools and concepts under investigation within EuroMixa and are inviting you to participate in our stakeholder survey.

Seventeen questions have been selected to evaluate our concepts and tools acceptance and understandability.

If you have attended one of the EuroMix training workshops or information sessions, please click here.

If you have NOT received any EuroMix training or taken part in information sessions, please click here.

The 5th EuroMix consortium meeting was held April 4th – 6th, 2017 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It consisted of work package (WP2-10) meetings, plenary consortium meetings and a general assembly meeting.

The main aims of the 5^th consortium meeting were the following:

1. To finalise test protocols for the animal study;
2. To finalise the discussion on A, B (similar MoA) and A, C (dissimilar MoA) chemicals based on available in vitro test results;
3. To set the next step in kinetic modelling;
4. To discuss the concept (retain & refine, infrastructure, AOP-wise testing, modelling approaches, case studies in tier 1 and tier 2);
5. To discuss and to prepare the first EuroMix stakeholder meeting.

EuroMix project organised training for stakeholders from industry, authorities and NGOs in February-March 2017.

Three training sessions have been organised. The first one was held at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy on February 21 2017 and twenty-three scientists from different EFSA units participated in the training.

Two sessions were held in Amsterdam, Netherlands on March 15 and 16 2017  for authorities, universities, NGOs and industry. Forty-two stakeholders participated in the training.

The aim of the training was to support understanding of the strategies for testing and risk assessment of mixtures that are developed in EuroMix. The focus was on how Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) and QSAR can contribute to testing and risk assessment of mixtures as well as on how the mixtures can be selected based on exposure and hazard information. The participants also got hands on experience of the MCRA tool for assessment of combined exposures and of QSAR models.

This was a one-day training and the draft training programme is available here.

For any questions on EuroMix training please contact:

Johanna Zilliacus, Horizontal activity leader for training in EuroMix, Karolinska Institutet. E-mail: johanna.zilliacus@ki.se

Tel: +46-8-52483544

Recruitment of participants to the EuroMix human cohort (WP7) – news

On the 9th of January 2017, The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) launched the EuroMix human cohort web page www.fhi.no/euromix (in Norwegian). The objective is to gather all information on the EuroMix human cohort study relevant for both existing and new participants, including the project description, invitation letter, questionnaires and diaries, frequently asked questions (FAQs) and contact information. The web page will also be used for future dissemination of milestones and results.

Furthermore, on the 20th of January 2017, a recruitment campaign was held at NIPH to recruit new participants to join the EuroMix human cohort. With banners and pamphlets, the project group members promoted the human cohort study during an internal meeting for all employees at NIPH. For visualisation, cylinders with “ping-pong balls” represent study participation (white balls = females, orange balls = males). So far, 45 out of 140 participants have been recruited.

The EuroMix human cohort study in short: The main purpose is to study selected biomarkers of exposure and effect to the mixture of interest and their variability in a human cohort of 140 participants (preferably 70 females and 70 males, aged 18-70). The study includes 24-hour food- and cosmetic diaries as well as biological samples collected at the end of the 24-hour period. Selected biomarkers of exposure to the mixture in serum and/or urine samples will be analysed using appropriate and validated state-of-the art analytical methods.

25th EPICOH – Scientific Committee  on Epidemiology in Occupational Health,                            4-7 September 2016.

Jacob van Klaveren gave a presentation at the annual congress of epidemiology.

“Exposure assessment to multiple chemicals and future mixture testing”.

here is the full presentation. The key message of the presentation: “In daily life we are exposed to many chemicals via various exposure routes such as food, the environment and the use of consumer products. Risk assessment should account for mixture effects and EFSA has started to group pesticides in cumulative assessment groups. Epidemiological studies might help to confirm that the risk assessment is sufficiently conservative or might provide information on the real exposure of humans to mixtures of pesticides. A link between the EFSA work, the EuroMix and the new European Biomonitoring (HBM4ME) Initiative was discussed during the 25th annual congress of the EPICOH congress.”

Accepted abstracts have been published as a supplement of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the Book of Abstracts is available here.

24-27 August 2016, Linz, Austria

Dr. Emiel Rorije gave a presentation based on the work carried out in the EuroMix project at the European Congress on Alternatives to Animal Testing, EUSAAT 2016. The full title of his presentation was „EuroMix: using (Q)SARs, TTC, molecular docking simulation and read-across as a first tier in mixture toxicity risk assessment“. The full presentation can be accessed here. And here is the link to the published abstract book.

The JRC report “Assessing potential risks from exposure to chemical mixtures – case study review” have been published. Future case studies on mixture risk assessment could fill the knowledge gaps identified in this review. Further information and a link to the report can be accessed here.

On the 17 February 2016, a meeting was held at RIVM in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, to discuss the synergy between EuroMix and EDCMixRisk. The WP leaders of EDCMixRisk and the experts involved in endocrine testing within EuroMix met to exchange project details and opportunities for cooperation or fine-tuning of research activities.
The aim of the meeting was to inform each other about the ongoing activities, and to define potential synergy in the planned experimental work, the Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOP) developments and the scientific policy for future mixtures risk assessment and management.
EDCMixRisk is an EU funded project, coordinated by Ake Bergman, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The project is also about chemical mixtures but their focus is on endocrine disruption, including experimental research and epidemiology finding. Link to project website EDCMixRisk
The meeting was very fruitful and a number of good ideas for closer cooperation were discussed and some of the issues suggested for future exchange of information and synergistic collaboration were:
1. Work on a joint AOP for some of the endpoints that are tested within both projects
2. Exchange the chemicals that are in the mixtures, and if feasible to test each other’s mixtures in some of the tests or on some key-events
3. Liaise about training events, web seminars, stakeholder workshops and other relevant actions