Toxicity of Chemical Mixtures: Risk, Hazard and Exposure Assessment

Denise Bloch heads the Junior Research Group “New Approach Methodology (NAM)-based assessment of mixtures” at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). Her research is focused on improving the human health risk assessment of mixtures by the application of alternatives to animal testing. In the past, she has worked as a regulator in the zonal authorisation of plant protection products at BfR (DE), conducted research on active transport inhibition at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig (DE) and has studied biogeochemistry at ETH Zurich (CH).

Amélie Crépet works for the French Competent Authority ANSES, where she coordinates experts groups on mixture and exposome. At the European level, Amélie coordinated work package or tasks in projects on mixture risk assessment (EUROMIX 2015-2019), on biomonitoring data (HBM4EU 2017-2021) and children chemical exposome (ATHLETE, 2020-2024). She participated actively to construct the PARC project (2021-2028), and she is co-leader of the task on integrative exposure and risk assessment. She was involved in the EFSA expert group on scientific criteria to group substances in mixtures and the one of WHO in 2019.

Bruno Dujardin is a senior scientific officer at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), where he has gained extensive experience in the regulatory risk assessment of chemicals. Recently, he took up a new role as team leader within the Methodology and Scientific Support unit. His team provides transversal support on exposure assessment, statistical data analysis and modelling. Within this capacity, Bruno is also responsible for steering the implementation of more holistic approaches that account for combined exposure to multiple chemicals.

Gero Eck is currently heading the European ecotoxicology team at Exponent International. In his previous roles as a regulatory ecotoxicologists he was working for industry and other consultants

Marion Junghans is the Team Leader Risk Assessment at the Swiss Centre Ecotox. Her areas of expertise include the risk assessment for micropollutants in water, the prediction of mixture toxicity and OECD test methods in the fields of aquatic ecotoxicology, biological degradability and environmental behaviour, as well as risk communication.

Marc Kennedy joined the Central Science Laboratory (now Fera Science Ltd) in 2006 and has worked primarily on probabilistic models for pesticide intakes from dietary and occupational routes. He has a PhD in statistics and has worked at the universities of Nottingham and Sheffield and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. Marc has also contributed to risk modelling software BREAM, BREAM2, and BROWSE for bystanders, residents, operators, and workers exposure and developed aggregate exposure models in the EU ACROPOLIS and EUROMIX projects.

Olwenn Martin is an Associate Professor in Health and Environment at University College London. She has an interdisciplinary background in chemistry, environmental sciences, environmental decision-making and development management. She was one of the earliest adopters of applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to environmental health and toxicology, including systematic review and meta-analysis and socio-economic analyses. She has specific interests in endocrine disruption and mixture effects.

Stephanie Melching-Kollmuss has been working in the field of regulatory toxicology for chemicals and plant protection products for over 20 years, for more than 15 years at BASF SE. Her special interest is in mixture toxicity and endocrine disruption. Stephanie was involved in two Cefic LRI projects: “Combined low-dose exposures to anti-androgenic substances” and “Developing a quantitative AOP for liver-mediated thyroid modulation after prenatal exposure to a xenobiotic compound in the rat”.

Finn Pedersen is Seconded National Expert at the European Commission. He is currently working on the revision of REACH including the use of MAF in REACH. He has previously worked as Chief Advisor for chemicals policy activities, incl. REACH, CLP, biocides, cosmetics, nanomaterials, international conventions, OECD collaboration for the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food.

Nathalie Vallotton is a Global Regulatory Environmental Science Manager at Dow Europe. She is member of the ECETOC task force on “Persistent chemicals and water resources protection” and is a member of the Cefic Persistence Issue Team.

Jelle Vlaanderen is an Associate Professor at the University of Utrecht, with a keen research interest in, epidemiology, including epidemiology of environmental and molecular epidemiology. He has previously held a position as postdoctoral fellow at IARC the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Arnd Weyers is an Ecotoxicology Expert (terrestrial vertebrates) at Bayer CropScience with over 10 years of experience in this field. He has previously held positions as Head of Laboratory at Currenta and Head of the BUA-Office Ecotoxicology at Dresden University of Technology.

Martin Wilks is a Medical Toxicologist and risk assessment expert with more than 30 years of experience in academia, industry and the health service. He is Director of the Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Geneva and the University of Basel. He is a EUROTOX Registered Toxicologist, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Secretary-General of EUROTOX and President-elect of the International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX).

Mathilde Zorn is a member of the ecotoxicology team of the Dutch board for the authorization of Plant Protection Products and Biocides (CTGB). She has more than 15 years of experience in the ecotoxicological risk assessment of plant protection products with special interest in the areas of birds and mammals, soil organisms and combination/formulation toxicology.

Esther de Jong is a risk assessor and project manager at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). She is a European Registered Toxicologist (ERT) who has been working in the field of plant protection products for over a decade.

Jacob van Klaveren coordinated the European funded projects ACROPOLIS and EuroMix aiming to improve combined exposure to multiple chemicals in Europe. Since 2015, Jacob has been coordinating the EFSA-RIVM partnership on mixtures of pesticides. From January 2020 onwards he has been participating in the interim management board of the Horizon Europe Partnership for the Assessment of the Risk from Chemicals (PARC) and has been responsible for coordinating the work programme innovation in regulatory risk assessment.