The ICCA HPV initiative and Appe
The High Production Volume Chemicals initiative is the chemical industry's endeavour to demonstrate, to regulators and the general public on a global level, that hazard assessments for its products can be carried out in a timely fashion.
At the end of 1998, the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) launched a voluntary global initiative to accelerate the process of data collection and hazard assessment for High Production Volume (HPV) chemicals. By sharing the efforts across the global chemical industry, the chemical industry commits to accelerate the process of data collection and hazard assessment in the frame of the OECD SIDS (Screening Information Data Set) programme so as to complete it for about 1,000 substances by year 2004.
As a first step, the industry is providing OECD with harmonised, internationally agreed data on the intrinsic hazards of approximately 1,000 HPV substances by the end of 2004. The information, i.e. a Screening Initial Data Set Dossier (SIDS Dossier), a SIDS Initial Assessment Report (SIAR) and a SIDS Initial Assessment Profile (SIAP), will be submitted to the OECD as part of its refocused HPV Chemicals Programme. The cost of generating data and the work to draft the assessments will be shared, whenever possible, by ICCA member companies in international consortia.
The list of priority chemicals is revised periodically. As a starting point, chemicals on the list are classified as high production volume chemicals in at least three world regions (EU, USA, Japan). Some of these HPV chemicals are already data-rich, as when they are under the procedure of an EU risk assessment. In this case, these chemicals are put in the so-called Annex of the ICCA/HPV list.
Two main approaches are encouraged for the work for the ICCA initiative:
- The formation of international consortia of companies to handle the dossier
- The "category approach", that is grouping chemicals for their evaluation, using Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR), and thus avoiding unnecessary testing and use of laboratory animals.
The commitments of the companies are registered on-line, on a web-based tracking system. The site being an on-line registration system, the data may change from day to day.
On the ICCA/HPV list of 1 325 chemicals (update August 2003), 118 belong to Appe work, although some of them belong also to Concawe (petroleum streams that can be used as solvents), and 108 are committed (i.e. 91.5 %). The general chemical industry percentage of commitment is 70.3 %.
To learn more about the background to this global chemical industry initiative, click here.
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