Hazardous chemicals and consumer product safety garner tremendous public attention nowadays, and rightly so. The European Commission’s landmark REACH regulation set a high standard, and regulatory agencies around the world are moving towards chemical regulatory reform. The resulting need to characterize thousands of chemicals with regard to their hazard, risk, and exposure potential poses an enormous task, and dozens of chemical assessment tools have been developed to aid assessors. An article in the April 2015 issue of IEAM identifies the most robust and comprehensive tools used in chemical assessment. Author Julie Panko discusses how she and her fellow authors critically evaluated dozens of chemical assessment tools, to help assessors select the right tool for the job.

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About the Guest
Julie Panko is a Principal Health Scientist with the consulting firm ChemRisk. She has 25 years of experience in conducting and managing a wide variety of environmental and occupational health risk assessments and is a certified industrial hygienist. A large portion of her practice is dedicated to the evaluation of chemical risks from industrial, commercial, and consumer products. Some of these have included product lines such as paints and coatings, adhesives, tires, arts and crafts, beauty care, and many industrial process chemicals. Since 2006, Julie has been the technical lead and project manager for a large sustainability initiative sponsored by the international tire industry to understand potential environmental health risks from the manufacturing and in-use portions of the tire life cycle. Ms. Panko and her colleagues at ChemRisk are researching the use of chemical footprinting as a tool to evaluate chemical risks associated with a product throughout its lifecycle, and provide a transparent and scientific method for evaluating chemical substitutes.

Articles Referenced in this Podcast
Gauthier, et al. 2015. Chemical assessment state of the science: Evaluation of 32 decision-support tools used to screen and prioritize chemicals