A commonly cited definition of sustainability is traced to the United Nation’s Brundtland Commission, which defined sustainability in 1987 as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Society’s understanding of chemical impacts has grown since the Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future report, and as a result, the role of a toxicologist has expanded to consider the impacts of chemicals upon humans and the ecosystem at large.
A 2025 Workshop Session titled “Integrating New Approach Methodologies to Inform Sustainable Chemical Decisions” featured presentations from government, industry, and the nongovernmental organization community, who each brought to the table their different approaches to the introduction of new approach methodologies (NAMs) in sustainable chemical assessment and identification. There are numerous definitions of NAMs, but the key aspect of all NAMs is that they are based on nonanimal technologies to facilitate the identification of hazards and/or risks of chemicals.
The Workshop kicked off with a presentation by Irantzu Garmendia Aguirre from the European Commission Joint Research Centre, who introduced the European Union’s Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework. The presenter described success piloting 23 prototype NAM-based solutions to define potential applications of NAMs to classify chemicals as low, medium, or high concern for human systemic toxicity. The results of the pilot workshop are public, with more work planned for 2025. Other work underway includes the European Commission’s commitment to develop a transitional initiatives catalog to chart activities, outputs, and outcomes associated with the phase-out of animal testing.
Steffi Friedrichs of AcumenIST described success incorporating NAMS into four EU-funded projects designed to advance methods applicable to SSbD nanomaterials and advanced materials: Macramé, Chiasma, Insight, and PINK.
Maria Baltazar of Unilever presented a recent Unilever biosurfactant case study that illustrated the value of NAMs within a SSbD project. Unilever’s published case study identifies a number of opportunities for improving the SSbD framework to support safe and sustainable consumer product innovation, including use of risk-based approaches and exposure assessment and specifically addressing and managing tradeoffs during the product design process.
Chris Bartlett and Gabrielle Rigutto of ChemFORWARD showed how various NAMs are instrumental in filling data gaps within ChemFORWARD chemical hazard assessments. They presented a recent case study for 4-methylbenzenesulfonyl isocyanate and compared results with and without the use of read-across for multiple hazard endpoints. For toxicologists who are not yet ready to master the application of NAMs, the ChemFORWARD on-line platform is an easy way to quickly (and painlessly) assess chemicals that have already undergone rigorous screening and verification. As sagely remarked by Dr. Bartlett, “Toxic is easy; safe is hard!”
This blog reports on the Workshop Session titled “Integrating New Approach Methodologies to Inform Sustainable Chemical Decisions” that was held during the 2025 SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo. An on-demand recording of this session is available for meeting registrants on the SOT Online Planner and SOT Event App.
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