In October of 2014, the World Health Organizaiton (WHO) Chemical Risk Assessment Network held its first face-to-face meeting in Paris. WHO established the Chemical Risk Assessment Network in 2013 as a voluntary collaboration aiming “to improve chemical risk assessment globally through facilitating sustainable interaction between institutions on chemical risk assessment.” The Network’s first participant meeting in Paris took place at the French Agency for Food, Environmental, and Occupational Health and Safety and was attended by representatives of 55 institutions from 29 different nations.
At the lively meeting in Paris, representatives of agencies, academic groups, and nongovernmental organizations from throughout the world explored a variety of risk assessment challenges and proposed themes of common interest. Key themes included:
- Identification of emerging risks;
- Characterization of uncertainty in risk assessment;
- Approaches to scale up capacity building; and
- Methods to establish a common understanding of systematic literature review of toxicological data.
Network participants also identified topics of interest that span international boundaries and elected to move forward on the development of action plans for multiple projects. A team of network members will evaluate activities related to the coordination of training needs and support for training in Africa and Asia. To address the unique challenges identified by participants from developing countries, particularly challenges posed by limited data, the network will establish a working group to support researchers in these countries.
Additional activities being undertaken by the network include building capacity in risk assessment, support for a post-graduate training course on risk assessment, the expansion of the Risk Assessment Training Database, and multiple collaborative papers and research efforts.
To learn about network activities and participation eligibility please visit the WHO website.