Risk assessment under REACH-Glycols ethers and read across approach
Abstract
In Europe, the new regulation for the chemicals safety management named REACH lays down a clear obligation to carry out vertebrate testing only as a last resort. In that context, REACH promotes the use of alternative methods and all available information or approaches. One of the approaches to fulfill data gaps when registration of a chemical is proceeded (preparation of the chemical safety report) is to use the category and read across approach. To illustrate how read across works and could be used to assess hazard for chemical category, the example of glycol ethers and in particular diethylene glycol ethers (di EGEs) was chosen. di EGE category gathers 5 chemicals (DGEE, DGEEA, DGPE, DGBEA, DGHE). Read across approach will be presented in details for toxicological hazard characterization. Results of the hazard and risk assessment show that read across has been successfully used for the di EGEs category.