Oral Presentation SETAC Asia-Pacific Virtual Conference 2022

EAS-E Suite: Combining PBT and exposure and risk estimation methods for ecological and human health assessment (#51)

Jon Arnot 1 , Alessandro Sangion 1 , Li Li 2 , Liisa Toose 1 , Trevor N Brown 1 , James Armitage 3
  1. ARC Arnot Research and Consulting Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada
  2. School of Public Health, University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, USA
  3. AES Armitage Environmental Sciences, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Hazard-based chemical assessment methods categorize chemicals using various “bright-line” pass/fail criteria for Persistence, Bioaccumulation and Toxicity (PBT) using scientific knowledge from the 20th century.  New approach methods (NAMs) to evaluate chemicals based on exposure and risk estimates have emerged in the 21st century. For example, the Risk Assessment IDentification And Ranking (RAIDAR) model combines chemical fate and transport at a regional scale with bioaccumulation in aquatic, terrestrial and agricultural food webs providing capacity for exposure and risk estimates for screening-level evaluations and priority setting. The Exposure And Safety Estimation (EAS-E) Suite platform was developed to address many challenges for ecological and human health assessment and facilitate the application of 21st century tools to inform decision-making. EAS-E Suite provides access to many databases and tools such as (i) chemical information (e.g., physical-chemical properties, toxicokinetics, production volumes), (ii) quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) for predicting chemical properties and half-lives, and (iii) various models for chemical hazard, fate, TK, exposure, and risk estimation, including RAIDAR and the PROduction-To-EXpsoure High-Throughput (PROTEX-HT) model. EAS-E Suite operationalizes these databases and models with user supplied chemical name, CAS, or SMILES entry information. Furthermore, EAS-E Suite “autoparameterizes” the built-in models for >70,000 discrete organic chemicals making it easy for the application of the models for experts and non-experts. Users can enter preferred values for chemical information to override the default parameters provided. EAS-E Suite is freely accessible on-line and can aid in knowledge transfer to stakeholders fostering collaboration and consensus building. This presentation provides an overview of several tools and databases in EAS-E Suite platform. A case example for 10,000 organic chemicals highlights that PBT categorization results show a high frequency of Type I and Type II “errors” compared to holistic risk-based prioritization results using RAIDAR indicating a need to consider both hazard and risk in decision-making.