Is the EU chemicals strategy for sustainability a green deal?

A fully integrated Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) in respect of chemicals is crucial and must include: • An objective evaluation of the present situation including impacts of 'chemicals of concern' throughout their life cycle, that incorporates sustainability issues. • A framework that facilitates innovation of chemistry-based approaches to tackle each of the key sustainability issues. The EU CSS only addresses adverse impacts and mainly focusses on one aspect of risk assessment, the hazard to humans from individual industrial chemicals.

Re-evaluation of target lipid model-derived HC5 predictions for hydrocarbons.

The target lipid model (TLM) has been previously applied to predict the aquatic toxicity of hydrocarbons and other nonionic organic chemicals and for deriving the concentrations above which 95% of species should be protected (HC5 values). Several concerns have been identified with the TLM-derived HC5 when it is applied in a substance risk assessment context. These shortcomings were addressed by expanding the acute and chronic toxicity databases to include more diverse taxonomic groups and increase the number of species.

Chronic toxicity of selected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to algae and crustaceans using passive dosing.

Because of the large number of possible aromatic hydrocarbon structures, predictive toxicity models are needed to support substance hazard and risk assessments. Calibration and evaluation of such models requires toxicity data with well-defined exposures. The present study has applied a passive dosing method to generate reliable chronic effects data for 8 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the green algae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata and the crustacean Ceriodaphnia dubia.

Oil refinery experience with the assessment of refinery effluents and receiving waters using biologically based methods.

The trend in discharges of petroleum-related substances from refineries in Europe shows a consistent picture of declining emissions, since first measured in 1969. This decline coincides with enhanced internal capture or recycling procedures and increasing use of physical and biological treatments. At the same time, and partly in response to legislative drivers, there has been an increase in the use of chronic (long-term) toxicity tests and alternative methods for assessing the quality of effluent discharges.

Extension and validation of the target lipid model for deriving predicted no-effect concentrations for soils and sediments.

Substance risk assessments require estimation of predicted no-effect concentrations (PNECs) in soil and sediment. The present study applies the target lipid model (TLM) and equilibrium partitioning (EqP) model to toxicity data to evaluate the extrapolation of the TLM-derived aquatic PNECs to these compartments. This extrapolation assumes that the sensitivity of aquatic species is similar to that of terrestrial and benthic species.

PETRORISK: a risk assessment framework for petroleum substances.

PETRORISK is a modeling framework used to evaluate environmental risk of petroleum substances and human exposure through these routes due to emissions under typical use conditions as required by the European regulation for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). Petroleum substances are often complex substances comprised of hundreds to thousands of individual hydrocarbons. The physicochemical, fate, and effects properties of the individual constituents within a petroleum substance can vary over several orders of magnitude, complicating risk assessment.