Events

Workshop on EUSES update needs

A workshop in Brussels (4-5 June 2018) was organised to review the state of the art of the EUSES tool regarding environmental exposure assessment of chemical substances. The aim was to find out how a future update of EUSES could best support the regulatory assessment under REACH and biocides.

The participants were selected based on their expression of interest and with an aim to keep a balanced participation of industry and authorities (as well as some academia) covering both fields of REACH and biocides.

The objectives were:

To discuss and agree among stakeholders on some initial update needs (for both release and fate modelling modules) for EUSES from a content perspective, with a view for IT implementation.
To collect additional ideas on needs for updates from the participants
To discuss a proposal for stakeholders’ involvement during the update and maintenance of EUSES by ECHA.

The information collected during the workshop helps ECHA to better understand the needs and requirements for a future update of EUSES. ECHA will take a decision in 2019 on whether and to what extent to invest in further maintenance and development of EUSES.

What is EUSES?

EUSES (the European Union System for the Evaluation of Substances) is a decision-support instrument (software) which enables government authorities, research institutes and chemical companies to carry out rapid and efficient assessments of the general risks posed by chemical substances. EUSES was originally developed by authorities in the 90’s but has not been actively maintained recently, so no further development has been carried out since 2012. This has led to the situation that the tool is starting to get outdated both methodologically and technologically.

Agenda and background information

Workshop Agenda
Background document
Annex 2 to background document: Proposed changes by workshop organising committee.

Workshop report

The report of the workshop is available here.

Presentations and video recordings

4 June

The EUSES tool for environmental risk assessment: past and future presentation.
ECETOC Modelling Workshop 2017: Outcome & Reflections on EUSES presentation.
Exposure assessment principles and EUSES under REACH presentation.
Exposure assessment principles and EUSES under BPR presentation.
EUSES development plan and interlink with Chesar presentation.
Priority setting criteria for ranking update needs presentation.
Current limitations and update needs identified by organising committee 1st part presentation.
Current limitations and update needs identified by organising committee: 2nd part presentation.

5 June

Stakeholders in the EUSES development: organisational structure, roles and process presentation.
UK exposure model project presentation.
Future developments in environmental risk assessment: toxic pressure calculation with SimpleBoxTreat presentation.
Presentation of outcome of World Café session presentation.

The video recordings are available here.

Contact

For suggestions or questions on the update of the EUSES tool, please contact: euses[at]echa.europa.eu