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www.csl.gov.uk > About CSL > CSL Science > Environmental Biology Group > Risk Analysis

Sound, science-based risk assessment is increasingly seen as a fundamental requirement for decision making by governments, industry and international institutions. Our Risk Analysis team specialises in quantitative risk assessment for environment, agriculture and food safety. Our main work is a strategic programme of research to develop and implement probabilistic approaches for risk assessment, funded by UK government and Research Councils, the EU and industry. We also undertake consultancy work and contribute to international expert committees.

Activities

Our programme of activities falls into two main areas: environmental risks of pesticides and food safety. Our work addresses specific risk problems of interest to our customers, as well as implementing new methods to extend our risk-analysis methodology.

The team is at the forefront of improving the science for assessing pesticide risks to birds and mammals, combining the knowledge generated in our ecotoxicology studies with our quantitative skills. Our innovations in this area are being rapidly transferred into regulatory practice at national and international levels.

We are also an international leader in the application of probabilistic methods to pesticide risk assessment, for both the terrestrial and aquatic environments. In addition, we have rapidly built a major new area of work in probabilistic modelling of human dietary exposure to food contaminants. As a result, we are contributing to international guidance on exposure assessments for food packaging.

Despite the importance of quantifying uncertainty, methods for doing this are still rudimentary and controversial. Our Risk Analysis team has invested in finding solutions to a whole range of related problems, such as measurement uncertainties and limits of detection in chemical analysis. We are leading contributors to the development of WHO and EU guidance on dealing with uncertainty in human exposure assessment.

The team invested significant effort in 2005-6 in leading the successful development of the technical concept and proposal for a major EU project, QALIBRA (Quality of Life Integrated Benefit-Risk Analysis). Our involvement puts CSL at the forefront of responding to the increasing interest in applying risk-benefit analysis to food safety.

Achievements

• Using radio-tracking data on use of crops by birds to replace extreme worst-case assumptions with statistical estimates for assessing pesticide exposure.
• Coordinating EUFRAM (EUropean FRAMework for probabilistic approaches to assessing the environmental impacts of pesticides) - a four-year EU project to develop guidance and case studies, involving 29 partners.
• Development of probabilistic software for assessing human exposure to chemicals migrating from packaging into food.
• Our work on "rapid risk assessment" has contributed to the establishment of a 24/7 on-call risk-assessment service for an industry customer.

Publications

Oldring P K T, Castle L, Hart A, Holmes M J: Stochastic modelling of consumer exposure for any substance from canned foods using simulant migration data. Food Additives and Contaminants, Vol 23, pp 528-538.

Oldring P K T, Castle L, Hart A, Holmes M J: Migrants from food cans revisited - application of a stochastic model for a more realistic assessment of exposure to bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (BADGE). Packaging Technology & Science, Vol 19 (2), pp 121-137.