Methods for toxicological risk assessment

Toxicological evaluations involve uncertainties, particularly if they are based on animal experiments. FoBiG is engaged in developing methods for toxicological risk assessment and seeks to employ state-of-the-art methods in assessment processes:

• Dose-response modelling (benchmark procedures; with software such as BMDS and PROAST), in order to effectively use dose-response data from experiments
• Extrapolation methods
• for extrapolating data from animal experiments to humans: allometric scaling and
  • for the consideration of specific risk groups such as children in the assessment Probabilistic methods
  • for effect assessment to evaluate uncertainty and variability in the derivation of limit values
• Risk estimate for carcinogens to derive occupational exposure limits for non-threshold substances (ERB, exposure-risk relationship methodology, DMELs: Derived Minimal Effect Levels)
• Discussion of new methods, such as genomics and metabolomics with their contribution to substance-specific assessments.

These developments and methods are integrated in the derivation of guidance and limit values.