2013 04 23 Meeting Minutes

 

Summary:

 

To summarize our progress to date, our CoR has developed and agreed upon a scope and objectives for our community to address that will add value to progress toward nano risk assessment.  (You can find it by clicking “Scope and Objectives document” at this link: https://us-eu.org/docs/handouts-for-cor-meeting-on-february-14-2013/).

 

The objectives are written to describe what needs to happen across the entire community to enable full risk assessment – these are an important long-term set of goals that drive and organize our progress as a CoR.  Practically speaking, we have articulated some reasonable goals for addressing these objectives within this group. 

 

1. Identify what work is already done or underway with regard to each objectives
2. Identify gaps in this work
3. Identify how we can work with the other CoRs to exchange information that may be helpful in filling in these gaps
4. Enable ongoing conversations between the US and EU nano risk assessment communities from scientific and regulatory perspectives

 

Detailed meeting minutes and action items:

 

Notes and action items from our meeting are listed here as an annotated version of the agenda:

 

1. 1.       Review sub-group progress to date

• 5 of the sub-groups have had meetings to discuss their objectives and approach
• Objective 1 proposed a table (on page 3 of this doc) to capture potential communication between CoRs and our RA CoR
• Objectives 2-4 have agreed to combine into one group for efficiency and will move forward as a single team

 

1. 2.       Develop objectives to meet for the November 2013 Workshop

All agreed upon adopting the following goals for making progress toward the RA CoR Objectives for Nov 2013 and beyond:

 

Goal 1:

Maintain a table of information on our www.us-eu.org website that will serve as an iteratively updated living document.  It will act as clearinghouse of existing work, associated groups that are addressing the objectives.

The proposed format for this table is an excel spreadsheet (also attached to this summary email) based directly off of a resource being created within the Ontologies and Databases CoR.  This leverages their work and will facilitate easier communication between CoRs as well as create cohesive outputs from all the CoRs as a whole.

 

 

Goal 2:

Identify gaps across the field based on the resources that have been compiled in the Nano_RA_Resources table.

Goal 3:

Coordinate with other CoRs wherever appropriate.  The gaps in the table created as part of Objective 1 may drive these conversations.  The approach to this will be a topic of discussion at our next meeting.

Goal 4:

Enable ongoing nano risk assessment conversations between US and EU by alternating presentations at each of our RA CoR teleconferences.  Presentations should be kept to ~20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion; the remaining ½ hour of the meeting can be dedicated to discussion of progress toward Objectives 1, 2 and 3.

 

1. 3.       Develop clear list of action items for sub-groups to complete by next full CoR call
2. Each subgroup – populate the attached Excel Spreadsheet for associated objective.

• Each sub-group please submit 1 compiled excel spreadsheet with the title “Nano_RA_Resources_SUBGROUP_X” via email to Amy Wang (wang.amy@epa.gov) by Friday May 17^th.  She has graciously agreed to serve as the spreadsheet coordinator  – please use the subject line “Risk Assessment CoR Table” to make this task easier on her!
• Two example resources are listed in the spreadsheet, taken from the existing list of documents which can be found here as a starting point: https://us-eu.org/docs/relevant-publications/
• The subgroup members are listed in the table here, where the first person listed serves as the point of contact: https://us-eu.org/docs/list-of-subgroup-members/
• Next step will be to survey the resources and identify key gaps.

 

1. Each person – Review the table here that proposes potential interactions with other CoRs and send any comments to Christine.hendren@duke.edu

 

 

1. Learn about the NanoSafetyCluster (NSC) WG 5 (Risk Assessment)

Lang Tran and team have kindly offered to make the inaugural presentation in our alternating US-EU series at our next meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Proposed Interactions with other CoRs

Group	Questions we have FOR the other CORs	Information We Should Provide TO the other CORs
Risk Management	*What products with nanomaterials should be looked at? *What decisions are being made in the near term that could be informed by risk assessment CoR discussion (e.g. definitions of nano? What information to require from companies?)	*What methods are being developed to rank risks of nanomaterials in a relative sense? *What specific risk forecasting needs are at the forefront of current thought and what might be their outputs? (i.e. what can risk managers expect to learn)
Exposure Modeling CoR	*What are the most important nanomaterial exposures to be concerned with (materials and pathways)	*What inputs do risk assessors need in order to harness exposure data and prioritize hazardous materials and likely routes of exposure for Risk Management? -Based on current methods -Based on any emerging methods
Eco-Tox Testing and Modeling CoR	*What are the most meaningful emerging parameters that we should be building into risk assessment approaches to predict nanomaterial eco toxicity? *What are the material parameters that go along with this? *What are the systems in which these parameters and materials are being/ need to be measured?	*What inputs do risk assessors need in order to harness eco-tox data and forecast risks of ENMs to ecosystems? -Based on current methods -Based on any emerging methods
Human Health Modeling CoR	*What are the most meaningful emerging parameters that we should be building into risk assessment approaches to predict nanomaterial effects on human health? *What are nanomaterials of primary focus in the existing and emerging human health studies?	*What inputs do risk assessors need in order to harness eco-tox data and forecast risks of ENMs to ecosystems? -Based on current methods -Based on any emerging methods
Ontology and Databases CoR	*What are the most widely accepted controlled vocabulary terms and required fields describing nanomaterials, systems and endpoints? *To what extent are databases linking to risk assessment approaches already in existence (EPA standard methods, etc.)	*What are the likely parameters that will feed into and come out of risk assessment methods or relative ranking approaches *What are the necessary meta-data for risk assessors to be able to compare studies against one another?