Overview of the Helsinki Chemicals Forum 2022

The Helsinki Chemicals Forum held from June 8 to 9, 2022 was a great success, from which key highlights of the industry were discussed brilliantly. This is a hybrid event, a first of its kind and there were more than 200 international policymakers, industry representatives, NGOs and academicians who attended the event.

Some of the discussions centred around the need to accelerate chemical regulations, to define sustainable by design chemicals, to merge chemical risk management with circularity and climate policy objectives, to speed up the replacement of animal testing, and the role of a global science-policy interface panel.

The session on the integration of chemical risk management with circularity and climate policy objectives was moderated by Steve Van de Broeck, the director of REACH and Chemicals Policy, Cefic. This is called the 3Cs and it is aimed at helping the EU meet the EU Green Deal goals. This integration is possible but would not be a smooth one due to conflicting and competing interests such as short and long-term benefits and differences in environmental aims.

Following the panel discussion on replacing animal testing, there is a consensus that there is a need to replace animal testing and most regulations are now tilting towards its replacement. Animal testing is time consuming, expensive, and sometimes not accurate to speculate the chemical effects on humans. Although new approach methods (NAMs) are coming up, their implementation is slow and most regulatory bodies need assurance that these NAMs are as effective as the use of animals for testing.

Also, NAMs are more readily available for endpoints such as aquatic toxicity and genotoxicity which is not the same for the more challenging endpoints such as carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, and endocrine disruption.

A key update regarding animal testing is the project set up by the European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA). The project ‘Use of NAMs for regulatory decisions on chemical safety’ has workstreams that are studying the application of NAMs within the industry.

The full report can be accessed here.