Newsletter.1 - HEROIC – An Introduction

Background to the project

Today, human risk assessment and environmental risk assessment are usually entirely separate and both face the same type of shortcomings and limitations. Current risk assessment (RA) procedures are designed to assess individual stressors one at a time while in the real world, reality is much more complex, and RA is facing major challenges. On the one hand the areas in which a human and/or environmental RA is required will continue to increase substantially (see e.g. REACH*[1]); additional complexity is added with the vision of integrated RAs as well as the assessment of the impacts of multiple stressors and toxicity of mixtures. On the other hand there is political and public pressure to reduce or eliminate animal testing. All these aspects together create the need for more cost effective, predictive and rapid tests for high quality sustainable RA including the better exploitation of existing data.

There is a lack of harmonisation in terminology and methodology used across individual disciplines. This leads to diverging approaches for the expression of risk, acceptability, uncertainty etc. and creates a major barrier for integrated RA. Data from toxicological and eco-toxicological studies are not readily accessible by risk assessors across disciplines.

The challenge the society is setting for those involved in the RA is to ensure more transparency, both on input data quality, assessment procedures and resulting uncertainty. This should allow better risk communication with the aim to regain consumer/public trust and to give unambiguous guidance for improved risk management.  Also, scientific RA plays an increasing role in the global risk governance as a tool to support sustainable trade practices and avoid divergences generated by different approaches

The HEROIC Approach

The stepwise approach chosen by the consortium implementing this EU funded research project includes:

  1. Consolidation and assessment of existing regulatory procedures for RA including the identification of current gaps and future needs to close those gaps.
  2. Consolidation and quality assessment of all relevant toxicity data applied for RA; potential new types of data generated by new technologies will be identified and evaluated.

In each of these steps the partners in the consortium will engage in initial data mining, data consolidation and evaluation, definition of key challenges and documentation. We also envisage establishing a structured dialogue with an extended RA expert network to check for data consistency and completeness. The general outcome of this approach can serve as an input for the development of a policy framework for integrated RA.

We envisage that the results of this project will have a positive impact on the:

  • coordination and exploitation of resources through a common framework for human and environmental RA,
  • quality of human and environmental RAs based on novel integrated testing strategies in data-poor situations,
  • capacity building for risk assessors across EU member states, through the internet platform “Tox-Hub”,
  • stakeholder and public understanding and acceptance of integrated RA.


[1]REACH is a new European regulation on chemicals and their safe use (EC 1907/2006). It deals with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances. The new regulation entered into force on 1 June 2007