ECO3A.2-USTO: Creation, Evaluation and Application of an Integrated Environmental Fate and Human Food Chain Bioaccumulation Model for Polar and Non-polar Organic Substances (IMPS)

Description

The goals of the project are:

1. To create a mechanistically based, non-steady state, chemical fate and bioaccumulation model to predict wildlife and human exposure to organic chemicals.
2. To further develop this model to make it applicable to polar chemicals that engage in hydrogen bonding (as opposed to current models which can only model chemicals undergoing dispersive interactions).
3. To evaluate the utility of the model and demonstrate its range of applicability.
4. To explore how physical chemical properties, and most particularly those properties determining persistence in the physical environment and food chain, affect human and wildlife exposure, and to evaluate this information in the context of current regulatory definitions of PBT chemicals.
5. To evaluate the influence of environmental properties and factors on chemical uptake and accumulation in wildlife and humans.
6. To evaluate what combination of emissions scenario and physical chemical properties makes it necessary to use a non-steady state (as opposed to a steady state) model.
7. To ascertain the utility of the integrated model in higher tier assessments within the current European risk assessment framework.