Invertebrate model and non-model species provide an expanded range of application opportunities from classical toxicological characterization to modern integrative approaches, with the potential for being effective vertebrate substitutes. The small size, ease of maintenance and short life cycles of many invertebrate species commonly used in environmental science make them very suitable for evaluating effects at different levels of biological organization and across generations of single and combined exposures to chemical insults and/or natural or anthropogenic stressors. Standardized toxicity tests with commonly cultured species generally have high reproducibility and acceptance. However, questions remain about their environmental relevance, especially for benthic stream invertebrates, and/or certain stressed water bodies. Consequently, there has been an increase in the use of field collected invertebrate species, for either single species bench scale tests or multispecies micro- or mesocosm experiments. Standardized invertebrate ecotoxicity test species used in global and regional chemical and effluent management programs are limited to relatively few taxa and include zooplankton and sediment dwellers with very few epibenthic invertebrates . High throughput screening applications to guild-related traits and transposing to ecosystem functions make them good models for assessing toxic effects in the laboratory and micro- and mesocosms and in-situ (field) experiments. However, there is a need to standardize ecotoxicological studies with field-collected invertebrates so that the results are reliable and repeatable. Furthermore, advanced molecular based technologies are allowing even more complex research involving genome studies, that are greatly facilitating our understanding of organisms’ response to stress, and the phenotypic consequences of complex invertebrate field assemblages. In this session we intend to show the latest breakthroughs and new directions in toxicological research using invertebrates, focusing on novel systems, endpoints, assays and testing systems . We encourage presentations that offer standardized, reproducible, or quantitative approaches to collecting and testing indigenous invertebrates for use in bench scale or meso/microcosm and in-situ. We invite presentations comparing lab and field studies; addressing impacts across several levels of biological organization (e.g. considering molecular, life-history, demographic and/or behavioural endpoints); studies focused on a mechanistic understanding of toxic effects and/or on risk assessment of chemical pollutants alone or interacting with natural and other anthropogenic stressors.

Within this session, new and novel approaches to the use of vertebrate organisms (e.g. fish, amphibians, and birds) for ecotoxicity tests will be explored, with a focus on understanding the role that various alternatives have in supporting environmental hazard and risk assessments of chemicals. Standard methods are a critical piece of risk-based decision making and yet there is a need to link new approaches to traditional methods. Numerous technical and regulatory challenges need to be considered for the integration of the traditional 3Rs (Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement of animal tests) along with the more recently included 3Rs: Reproducibility, Relevance and applicability for Regulatory use. In Europe, the need for alternative approaches has been primarily driven by certain legislation such as the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, the 7th Amendment to the EU Cosmetics Directive, selected legislation in Germany and the European chemical legislation REACH. As an example, in REACH it is possible, in principle, to fulfill so-called ‘standard information requirements’ by other means than new experimental studies including existing non-GLP and non-guideline data, weight of evidence (WoE) approaches; quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) predictions, in vitro methods, grouping of substances, and read-across approaches. This session will explore the development and adoption of innovative approaches to chemical, wastewater and ambient water assessments for both acute and chronic ecotoxicity endpoints. We encourage presentations that include new developments or adaptations for in vitro and in vivo models to support environmental hazard and risk assessments. Additionally, progress relating to the generation of new bioaccumulation data using alternative approaches, particularly for persistent, bioaccumulative and/or toxic (PBT) chemicals assessments are also welcomed. We encourage discussions on how to address uncertainties, challenges, potential limitations, advantages and needs for further development of alternative approaches. Finally, we encourage ideas on how new approach(es) could be accepted into a regulatory framework or integrated test strategy.

Regulatory decisions surrounding chemical safety are based primarily on human and environmental protection and rely heavily on the results of tests in animals. However, there is growing recognition that the use of animals in toxicity testing supporting chemical safety assessment is not always predictive of the effects in humans, or the species in question. Globally, there is a major drive to reduce in vivo testing with a move to focus on new approach methodologies (e.g. in chemico & in silico) to include more mechanistic and computationally-derived data to support safety decisions. To date, (quantitative) structure-activity relationship ((Q)SAR) methods have often been overlooked as too imprecise or simplistic and new technologies, such as Machine Learning (ML), are sometimes neglected due to concern over their “black-box” nature. Nevertheless, there is a large, relatively untapped potential for the increased application of mechanistically based computational approaches to support decision making. Improved understanding of mode and/ or mechanism of action linked to robust (Q)SAR and quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR), for example, provides valuable opportunities to further support safety decisions. The adverse outcome pathway (AOP) conceptual framework is another approach capturing existing mechanistic data and describing causal linkages to apical endpoints to predict adverse effects/endpoints. Such pathway-based approaches provide opportunities to incorporate data generated from all species and biological levels of organization to mutually inform both human and environmental safety. The parallel development of bioinformatics approaches now enables AOPs to be explored computationally for predicting the taxonomic relevance of existing and newly generated toxicity data and knowledge across species. However, it is acknowledged that maximum value can be achieved when each method is considered in the context of, aligned with, or validated using a combination of NAMs. We propose this session as a forum for researchers and regulators to investigate enhanced opportunities of interoperability and cooperation between computationally derived information for supporting chemical safety decision making. Case studies which involve the integration of more than one computational approach are encouraged including mode and mechanism of action (Q)SAR/ QSPR, structural alerts and chemical profiling as well as AOPs and bioinformatics tools (e.g., SeqAPASS, EcoDrug, phylogenetic workflows) for predicting the taxonomic relevance and extrapolating knowledge across species. Case studies involving ML and Deep Learning are also encouraged. The contents of this abstract neither constitute, nor necessarily reflect, US EPA policy.

Human activities rapidly increase the burden of environmental stressors like changes in climate or chemical exposures, profoundly affecting most species’ health and survival, including humans. Epigenetic mechanisms are fundamental for the development of multicellular organisms ensuring that only required biological functions are active in any given cell type. So far, the scientific community has established four layers of epigenetic mechanisms including DNA and RNA modifications, histone modifications, and a large suite of non-coding RNAs which are not epigenetic marks per se but regulate other epigenetic information. Perturbation of these mechanisms can have subtle but significant effects that can be long-lasting, not just within a single generation but across multiple generations even if the original cause of the effect has been removed. Improving our understanding of the relationships between environmental factors, epigenetics, and adverse outcomes is not only of fundamental scientific interest, but would also provide a more precise assessment of risk and consequences. Indeed, epigenetic effects present new challenges for risk assessment as their adverse outcomes cannot always be straightforwardly identified and/or can occur long after chemical exposure ceased. In recent years reports of epigenetic effects of stressors have emerged in both ecotoxicology and human toxicology, but it remains challenging to determine the exact mode of action of those, which would allow to translate these results to risk assessment frameworks. A crucial bottleneck is the lack of knowledge on how epigenetic changes at the sub-organismal level led to adverse outcomes at organismal or population level. Research is needed to address the following key questions: How can we better elucidate epigenetic events or key marks related and/or directly involved in the modes of action leading to adverse outcomes? How should we design our experiments to be able to identify robust epigenetic effects and account for potential confounding factors? What evidence is required to determine whether multigenerational effects have occurred and how do we translate this to a risk assessment strategy? This session will focus on the current state of knowledge on the interaction of epigenetic and environmental conditions across all species, including humans, presenting studies on mechanisms inducing epigenetic changes, and the impact these alterations have on adverse outcomes, as well as novel approaches for testing and validating causality of these changes, e.g. through epigenome editing. Studies that focus on: 1) the impact of regulatory accepted or environmentally relevant doses and their effect on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and their resulting adverse phenotypes; and 2) the development of model systems and recent technological innovations that will facilitate progress in this field will be of particular interest.

The public concern about health and environmental implications of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) has led to the development of current test systems, which include in silico, in vitro, and in vivo methods focused on detecting potential endocrine activity, and in vivo tests that collect apical data to detect possible adverse effects that are relevant at population level. However, there are still limitations in existing testing approaches from an environmental perspective and for human health, and research is continuing to close those gaps and to improve testing strategies and assessment of endpoints. Pragmatic, science-based approaches for EDC hazard and risk characterization rely on an integrated analysis of existing information in a weight of evidence assessment, based on specific and effective test systems. Although multiple in vitro tests exist and are currently being developed, most assays (e.g. for thyroid disruption) are not yet validated. Additionally, in vitro tests which are metabolically competent are not yet available. This represents a serious gap in the test strategy, since in several countries and/or legislative frameworks animal testing is prohibited, for example for the safety assessment of cosmetic products, or not required for low tonnage industrial chemicals. These elements highlight the need to further develop new approach methodologies (NAMs), including in silico and in vitro methods that can be implemented in screening and testing strategies for investigating ED properties of chemicals. Other promising NAMs like cross-species extrapolation or in vitro-to-in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE) should also be further developed and implemented in the regulatory context. This session aims to address new developments, specific gaps in the current approaches, as well as experience and challenges in the use of NAMs for the evaluation of EDCs. Specifically, we would like to invite speakers to present new testing/assessment methods, as well as approaches for addressing natural and synthetic chemicals that might affect estrogen, androgen, thyroid, steroidogenesis and/or other endocrine signaling pathways. These scientific aspects should be complemented by the regulatory perspective with regard to experiences with applying available guidance on EDC identification and potential needs for further developments. Among other topics, we hope to discuss the gaps regarding: 1) adequately sensitive species and life stages; 2) mechanistic endpoints that are diagnostic for endocrine pathways of concern; 3) the linkage between mechanistic responses and apical, adverse outcomes; 4) possible extrapolation between taxa, including humans, and between in vitro and in vivo models, and 5) consideration of concepts of potency as used in pharmacology and toxicology. Based on these gaps, we encourage speakers to incorporate the AOP (adverse outcome pathway) concept and the 3Rs principles for optimization of EDC testing strategies.

Assessment of the ecological quality status of surface and marine waters and soils relies mostly on multimetric indexes based on species diversity of the resident communities. An example of one of such initiatives is the European water Framework Directive that help establishing the ecological quality status of European rivers and ongoing and future remediation strategies to improve it. On the other hand, these analysis are fundamental on the detection of adverse effects related to the global change in ecosystems, as well as to monitor episodes of massive loss of diversity or the presence and spreading of invasive species. However, this approach confronts several limitations. For example, species identification is not always possible and, in most cases, indexes have to rely on higher taxonomic levels, such as Family. Microbial communities (fungus, bacteria, archaea) are systematically not taken into account in the environmental analyses, despite their ecological relevance, whereas ethical and conservation concerns drastically limit destructive sampling of many vertebrates, due to the dwindling of their global populations. Last but not least, it is not always possible to relate ecological quality values to chemical loads or other anthropogenic impacts. New developments in metagenomic tools may address most of these problems, henceforth offering a holistic view of the impact of environmental pollution on natural communities. Metabarcoding techniques based on eDNA and bacterial and archaeal 16S DNA high throughput sequencing allow assessing both prokaryote and eukaryote species diversity from a single environmental sample. Shotgun metagenomics, on the other hand, allows studying not only changes in species diversity, but also in gene functions across species within a given community. This session aims to gather scientists from varied research backgrounds to facilitate collaboration and interdisciplinary solutions to the application on metagenomics in stress ecology. This session is open to scientists willing to present new experimental and theoretical discoveries to broadly share new insight on the application of metagenomics to ecotoxicology, stress ecology and on microbial communities. The session proposes the following types of studies: (1) An integrative approach to assess the effects of stressors on microbial diversity, especially those that impact ecosystem function or phenotypic endpoints of health, (2) Characterization of single or multiple stressor(s) across different environments or host species to propose generalizable insights into microbiome responses to disturbances; (3) Identification of microbial indicators (e.g. taxa, keystone species, or guilds) responsive to single or multiple stressors, highlighting community-level signatures of stressed microbiomes.

Whole Effluent Toxicity Testing (WET, includes ambient waters) and Whole Effluent Assessment (WEA) have been around since the 1940s. Use of WET & WEA is very environmentally relevant since such approaches consider various mixtures of contaminants found in urban and industrial effluents and receiving waters. Most of the methods used in both Europe and North American have been standard test species that have been proven very reliable and reproduceable. However, ecologists through the years have questioned the ecological relevance of using such standard test organisms based on whether they are sensitive enough or appropriate to be used in various water bodies. In recent years in Europe and in some Member States the application of EBM (effect-based methods) is advancing and progressing, these methods include bioassays in vivo and in vitro; at legislative European level there is an activity on-going in the context of the EU WFD (Water Framework Directive) for the application of EBM in surface water monitoring. In relation to bioassays in vivo there are published short term chronic trout methods that maybe are more appropriate for using in effluents to cold waters and tests with vertebrate embryos (fish and amphibians, e.g. FET and AMPHITOX ) that take into account the principle of 3R for animal welfare as well as the high susceptibility to noxious agents at early life stages. In addition, many substances with multiple Mode of Actions (MoAs), potential acting as agonists, antagonists or perhaps having even synergistic effects. One example is the effect-based method monitoring approach in assessing the risk from estrogenic substances with in vitro tests. The quality standards for e.g. 17β-estradiol (E2), 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2) and estrone (E1, metabolite of E2) are in the pg/l range, which are often below the LOQ for routine chemical analytical measurements. This session will focus on methods and approaches that present new test species and new methods that can be more ecologically relevant and possibly more sensitive than existing standard test organisms and/or approaches and based on their eco regional or geographical representation could be considered as sentinel organism for water quality protection. This session will also focus on new approaches to overcome the mixture effects of whole effluents and will take into account other MoAs estrogenicity, neurotoxicity, genotoxicity and teratological effects that are often relevant also for human health assessment.

One of the main goals of ecotoxicology continues to be the assessment of effects on wildlife exposed to an ever-increasing amount of anthropogenic contaminants. Usually, the effects derived from chronic exposures are less obvious than acute effects and, thus, only a thorough study of the mechanisms at different biological levels may lead to properly understanding them. These effects often include oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, immunosuppression, and changes in behavior, reproductive success, or development, among others. Additionally, organisms in the wild are usually exposed to mixtures of contaminants simultaneously with other stress factors, such as adverse weather, disease, predation risk, or lack of resources that make it especially challenging to identify exposure-response relationships between pollutants and their associated effects. A growing number of studies focus on characterizing different biomarkers to evaluate the health status of wild organisms that allow identification of potential chemically-induced effects that could lead to different adverse outcomes and, ultimately, to population declines. Specific connections between adverse effects in vivo, survival, and their impacts on population remain largely a stated goal rather than current reality. The results of available studies often seem contradictory, while elsewhere little information is available for certain contaminants or wildlife taxa. In this session, we aim to spark productive discussion on the chronic effects of different contaminants on established and emerging pathways such as oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, immunomodulation, vitamin levels, and other biomarker responses, to increase our understanding of how toxic compounds affect physiology in birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. We hope this discussion will help researchers to build connections and gain insight to forward their difficult task of linking effects across multiple biological levels, from gene expression, protein expression, and metabolism, to physiological alterations to individual survival, and ultimately population impacts.

Chemicals are widely used in modern society, but determining their adverse effects, including those without significant phenotypic consequences, on humans and ecosystems is challenging due to diverse exposure and adverse outcome pathways. Further, individual responses to chemical exposures in human and nonhuman populations can vary as a function of susceptibility (e.g., gene-environment interactions, sensitive life stages). These susceptibility differences can be difficult to elucidate, particularly in ecosystems, which can be composed of hundreds to thousands of different species and genotypes adapted to their local environment, resulting in variable responses to chemical exposures at the population and community level. Therefore, methods and data are needed to assess the huge number of interacting environmental and genetic components that lead to the observed adverse outcomes and, particularly, incorporate individual susceptibility and resilience. By clarifying the response patterns from exposure to chemicals, human and environmental health can be protected, and the ability of organisms and systems to recover from chemical disturbances can be determined in order to prevent hazardous chemicals’ reduction of ecosystem resilience. The European Commission’s Chemicals Strategy towards a toxic free environment highlights the importance of assessing and preventing adverse human and ecosystem effects from chemicals, and the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) report ‘Omics in Risk Assessment describes the need for ‘omics technologies (including proteomics and metabolomics) incorporated alongside current human and environmental risk assessment approaches. Technological advancements in big data generation and analysis (e.g., high-throughput screening, data mining, machine learning, ‘omics tools) have the potential to clarify the role of chemicals in adverse outcomes across human and nonhuman populations. These approaches are beginning to be used to assess complex health outcomes (e.g., behaviour, epigenetic endpoints) as well as individual and population level susceptibility patterns across genes, environments, and life stages. This session aims to discuss novel approaches using big data to characterise adverse outcomes from chemical exposures (including complex endpoints) at the individual, intraspecies, and interspecies level. We invite presentations on methods to assess and protect ecosystem resilience, as well as presentations assessing human and ecosystem susceptibility to adverse outcomes from chemical exposures. We are also open to studies using large and medium-sized datasets to address the same research questions. This interdisciplinary session will bring together researchers across a wide range of research areas to enhance support for the health and function of humans and diverse organisms/habitats.

Plants are key structural and functional components of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems linking food webs and biogeochemical cycles. These important parts of our environment are under threat e.g. by climate change or increased agricultural land use due to the growing world population. The adequate protection of plant communities from adverse impacts like chemicals and other man-made stressors must be ensured to meet the goals of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. This session is an initiative of the SETAC Plant Interest Group and welcomes scientific contributions in the fields of aquatic and terrestrial plant ecology and ecotoxicology especially focusing on the impacts of contaminants and pollutants on plants in order to aid the concept of a reduced pollution society. Abstracts may cover algae, mosses, ferns or higher aquatic and terrestrial plants in the following areas: • Developments in the guidance for the risk assessment of pesticides and other chemicals. • Test methods for assessing chemical effects on plants e.g. experimental methods for new standard test species, recommended endpoints for use in risk assessment, mesocosm studies. • Challenges relating to the measurement of reproductive parameters and visible injury in plants. • Linking test design with predicted environmental exposure profiles in environments (e.g. pulsed dose studies for aquatic plants). • Methods for evaluating the potential of plants to recover from adverse impacts. • Use of plant data in chemical risk assessments and associated tools (e.g. modelling, species sensitivity distributions). • Understanding plant community composition and dynamics leading to a better understanding of biodiversity and succession to inform protection goals and experimental methods for chemical risk assessment. • Using plants in buffer zones to mitigate exposure of aquatic and terrestrial environments. • Use of aquatic and terrestrial plants in artificial plant communities for phytoremediation. • Control of invasive aquatic, riparian and terrestrial plant species and how data from control programs could be used to inform chemical risk assessment (e.g. assessment of potential for recovery).

More and more we need to face to the conclusion that our arthropod communities, responsible for several ecosystem services, are under severe stress. An alarming number of publications report that in the next few decades a severe amount of insect species could go extinct, indicating butterflies, bees / other pollinators and dung beetles being the most likely candidates. Several main causes such as habitat loss and pollution are to blame. Also, climate change seems to be playing a part, where insects in tropical regions may have a narrow tolerance range for temperatures and may already suffering declines because of global heating. Further on, chemicals, either willingly or accidently released into our environment, are recognized as being a very important stressor, which reaches across aspects like Plant Protection Products and Fertilisers used on Farms up to Emissions and Waste from Factories and Cities. As a result, arthropods are becoming an increasingly important subject or science and research in a wider context beyond the risk assessment and regulation of chemicals. The research on new species and test systems into ecotoxicological evaluations of chemicals, e.g. stingless bees, solitary bee brood, Isopoda and Lepidoptera, as well as the revision and harmonization of already existing and established testing strategies, e.g. mysids, gammarids, predatory mites and pollinating insects in a wider sense, has led to a serious increase of possibilities and complexity of the work field. Finally, the increasing demand of connecting arthropod ecotoxicological research to other fields of risk assessment such as residues, analytical exposure verification, bioaccumulation aspects and ecosystem services requires a strong inter-disciplinary approach and a need to strengthen several concepts in the upcoming years. This session is a call to present research on 1) new, 2) ongoing developments and 3) revisions in all fields of arthropod risk assessment and environmental toxicology. This may include such diverse topics as research aligned to EFSA aquatic guidance document, the recent NTA EFSA Scientific Opinion document, but also aspects from the current in-soil organism EFSA Scientific Opinion. Consequently, presentations in this session may comprise, but do not have to be limited to, finding adequate species and setups to address (new) data requirements and research demands, results of small scale and community effect studies, exposure assessments as well as modelling exercises on either individual, population and/or landscape level. Research focused on acute and chronic assessments of arthropods, on spatial and temporal ecology of pollinators (including non-bees) and other members of this important group in various landscapes as well as ideas and opinions on the future challenges of risk assessment are more than welcome to be shared here with the interested community and fellow scientists.

There is a continuous need for biomonitoring of contaminants to improve environmental risk assessment and regulatory actions. Regulatory strategies such as the so-called “Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability” within the framework of the “European Green Deal”, need biomonitoring studies in higher vertebrate species, as they provide data that contribute to the knowledge of the complete lifecycle of chemicals and their bioavailability, help to detect pollutant sources, and are useful to assess the effectiveness of regulatory measures. The value of wildlife as sentinels of environmental contamination is particularly evident in the case of compounds with persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic (PBT) properties that may also biomagnify through food webs. Multiple studies with these species have shown sufficient evidence of the accumulation and/or toxicity of many legacy compounds, which points to the need to continue their study. However, information is limited regarding the exposure of wildlife to many emerging contaminants (e.g., plasticizers and other plastic-associated chemicals, alternative poly- and perfluorinated alkyl substances, current use phytosanitary and biocide products, human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and replacement flame retardants), of which many can also be considered PBT chemicals with potential to transfer through food chains. The main objective of this session is to present new research related to the use of vertebrate wildlife species (birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians) in biomonitoring studies for both legacy and emerging contaminants. Thus, potential topics include, but are not limited to: 1. Studies about the quantitative exposure of wildlife species to legacy and emerging contaminants, both under field and laboratory conditions. 2. Use and validation of alternative non- destructive or less invasive samples from birds, mammals, reptiles, and/or amphibians to assess exposure to contaminants. 3. Research examining spatial and/or temporal trends in contaminant exposure of wildlife species. 4. Studies of contaminants in potential prey of higher wildlife vertebrates to assess trophic transfer of those contaminants.

The traditional environmental risk assessment (ERA) scheme is divided into an exposure and an effect assessment. However, environmental risks can only be characterized after combining exposure and effects, and potential risks can be overestimated, underestimated, or impossible to assess when these two fields are not aligned correctly. For this reason, this session would like to bring the exposure and effect assessment of aquatic ecosystems together with a common goal: an increased mechanistic understanding of the environmental risk of chemicals. ERA increasingly relies on modelling approaches to make extrapolations, for example, from tested species to all species, from tested chemicals to all chemicals, and last but not least, from tested environmental conditions to different environmental scenarios. Identification of relevant environmental scenarios is critical to determine appropriate model input parameters. However, there currently exists a mismatch between scenarios known from the exposure side (e.g. FOCUS) and the biological component with which they must be combined to perform the risk assessment. Consider for example the usage of cold temperatures to account for slow degradation rates, whilst the relationship between temperature and species sensitivity still must be unravelled. Studies submitted to this session include approaches combining exposure and effects, but can also focus on either the exposure or effect side alone, as long as they demonstrate a clear mechanistic link between both, and thereby contribute to an increased level of realism. An example from the effect side could be a DEBtox model with a temperature component, enabling a direct and more realistic connection to a temperature-dependent exposure model. An example from the exposure side could be a flexible environmental fate model whose spatial-temporal scale can be adjusted to match with the mobility and life cycle duration of the most sensitive taxa. This session will explore the development of innovative mechanistic approaches to chemical assessments related to acute, chronic, lethal, and sub-lethal ecotoxicity endpoints, covering all biological levels, and including environmental monitoring, fate and exposure modelling, bioavailability and biodegradation studies. We encourage work that include read across, enhanced predictive models (e.g. QSARs, ICEs, and TKTD models) and new developments on environmental scenarios to enhance the alignment of exposure and effect assessment to predict environmental risks of chemicals.

Biodiversity is defined as …”the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part…”(COP, 1992). The term has not often linked with the use or risk assessment of plant protection products, mainly due the nature of the products, but also due to the nature of agriculture in general, which has yielded a modified landscape, both in and off field. Although taking a secondary part in crop production, biodiversity ensures the deliverance of ecosystem services that are an indispensable tool in keeping the ecosystem in balance, either by e.g., providing biological pest control, or recycling of nutrients in the soil (Pelosi et al., 2014; Lavelle et al., 1995). Despite the advances in technology in the Anthropocene and the benefits derived from it it has also yielded a significant loss in biodiversity, with studies demonstrating a ~70% decline in insect biomass and abundance within areas of close proximity to agricultural landscapes (Haalmann et al., 2017; Seibold et al., 2019). Aiming to secure the integrity of biodiversity and the natural capital derived from it, different European regulations, such as EC 1107/2009, have incorporated biodiversity as part of their protection goals, however, efforts to develop and support measures to ensure its protection are lacking, especially in agricultural landscapes (EFSA, 2016). So, the challenge remains: how to maintain and increase biodiversity in and off agricultural fields? Some options include assessing the impact on ecosystem services provided by, e.g., different species (SPU – specific providing unities), or the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which proposes that 3-7% of European farming land should be managed as an ecological focus area (EFSA, 2016). Even with recent advances in the field of Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), certain gaps remain, such as: which endpoints should be used; what should be measured: ecosystem services, traits, functions; what is the spatial delimitation, etc.? Given recent advancements to this topic, this session aims to start the discussion on biodiversity protection through the lenses of environmental risk assessment, and the challenges it brings. The session will highlight different methodologies and approaches being used to measure, protect and increase biodiversity, in this case – of soil invertebrates and non-target arthropods, in and off agricultural fields.

This session aims at discussing recent insights in the combined impact of various stressors – comprising amongst others chemical pollution, intra- and interspecific interactions, and invasive species – on different levels of ecological complexity including biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. A special emphasis will be on the impact on organisms’ physiology and the potential propagation of these effects to higher levels of ecological organization. Moreover, contributions addressing consequences of stressor-induced alterations in the community composition on horizontal (within a trophic level) and vertical (across trophic levels) interactions within food webs and ecosystem functions are invited. Studies using controlled experimental approaches (e.g., factorial designs) that further the mechanistic understanding of stressors’ interactions or correlational field studies are welcome. Our session will thus wrap up the state of the science regarding the role of multiple stressors for the integrity of ecosystems’ structural and functional characteristics and discuss options for a more holistic and realistic assessment of their risks.

Aquatic ecosystems are complex and dynamic adaptive environments driven by multiple biotic and abiotic factors. These factors encompass an intricate range of biological interactions and environmental pressures that influence one another. Under global climate change (GCC) the interaction between these factors may be disturbed and can impair the normal functions of the aquatic ecosystem. In addition to the stressors induced by GCC, many aquatic ecosystems are also under threat due to pollution from pesticides and pharmaceutical use, industrial waste, and plastic pollution, among others. GCC is already influencing abiotic factors (i.e., temperature) that may modify both the degradation and bioavailability of toxicants, as well as their toxicity, making it hard to predict their net impact. This is true of contaminants already well studied, like pesticides, but especially for those of emerging concern, such as plastics and nanoparticles. Additionally, the mechanisms underlying stressor interactions are still poorly understood and studies have yielded contrasting results. This can make it difficult to generalize the findings and to predict toxicity under different GCC scenarios. To stablish early warning indicators and implement prevention, or even mitigation measures, it is of interest to understand how toxicity interacts with biotic and abiotic factors that are changed under GCC. Additionally, how spatial and temporal variation influences the adverse effects caused by pollution and GCC stressors and their implications across the biological hierarchy will be important to understand. This session is open to both oral and poster contributions focused on the combined effects of biotic and abiotic factors in aquatic ecosystems facing GCC, as well as on integrative tools to analyse and predict these impacts from molecular to high levels of biological organization. We encourage work that focuses on (i) the effects on fate and toxicity of toxicants under current and future GCC scenarios, (ii) spatial and temporal variation in the combined effects of toxicants and other global change-related stressors, (iii) and how lab-based studies can be extrapolated to field scenarios to predict organismal and ecological response beyond the molecular and individual level. Studies focused on the natural environment as well as on controlled experiments are welcome.

Soil is a complex, dynamic system constituted by abiotic and biotic components that represents the primary habitat and harbor of a high biological diversity and activity, supporting multiple ecosystem functions and services. Ecosystem functions and services depend highly on soil biodiversity, accounting for trophic and behavioral interactions in a temporal and spatial scale. The soil compartment is often subjected to several threats from direct or indirect anthropogenic sources, with climate change representing extra challenges to this complex ecosystem. Agricultural and forestry practices, urbanization (e.g., waste disposal, soil sealing) or mining and industrial activities are among the main causes of soil misuse and overexploitation. When the soil quality status is changed by altering its physical, chemical, and structural composition, soil biota will be affected, which in turn will potentially threaten all soil functions and services. Therefore, soil pollution and climate alterations, especially extreme events, are paramount to be considered in risk assessment procedures. The Report on Climate Changes and Land from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in August 2019, states that land is a critical resource and “Land already in use could feed the world in a changing climate and provide biomass for renewable energy, but early, far-reaching action across several areas is required”, along with “the conservation and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity”. Therefore, with this session we intend to cover studies on soil functional parameters and their direct relation to biodiversity conservation and restoration. We especially invite studies aimed at understanding how soil ecosystem functions are affected by climate change, like extreme events, carbon dioxide and temperature increase, droughts, and floods, and/or pollution scenarios with examples from emergent contaminants or contaminants of interest, including laboratory and (semi)field studies. Soil functions include soil structure maintenance, organic matter dynamics, nutrient cycling, biological population regulation, habitat provision and primary production. Studies can therefore be related to several relevant indicators and endpoints to be measured to understand how stressors can unbalance soil dynamics and biodiversity, and their potential resilience. Studies dealing with the soil exposome concept, and its environmental implications are also welcome.

Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are intimately linked via reciprocal fluxes of energy, carbon, nutrients, and pollutants. These exchanges enable coupled ecosystems to subsidize each other and are often critically important for the structure and functioning of the receiving ecosystem. For instance, the metabolism of small streams is often dominated by detrital inputs from riparian vegetation, whilst terrestrial predators in the riparian area obtain a relevant fraction of their diet from emergent aquatic insects. However, these trophic connections can be affected – both in quantity as well as in quality – by anthropogenic stressors such as chemical pollutants. The role of terrestrial systems as a resource donor (i.e., land-to-water fluxes) is relatively well-studied, and toxicant effects on associated ecosystem processes have received considerable attention in the last two decades. In contrast, water-to-land fluxes and the implications of pollutants in the receiving system have received much less attention, both from an ecological as well as from an ecotoxicological perspective. In this session, we discuss research providing new conceptual and empirical insights addressing food web effects, with an emphasis on cross-ecosystem linkages and their assessment. We plan to start the session with a key-note lecture, that puts the session into a larger ecological context.

Predicting the impacts of chemicals in ecosystems represents the key topic of ecotoxicology. Ecotoxicology has traditionally focused on empirical studies on organismic effects in controlled laboratory settings, where quantitative concentration-response relationships can reliably be derived, i.e. through the exclusion of potential confounding factors present in real-world ecosystems. At this scale, simple mathematical models (e.g. concentration addition) have demonstrated high potential to predict the toxic effects from mixtures. However, how results from laboratory or site scale can be extrapolated to different species or be used to predict impacts on real-world ecosystems remains a challenge and was rated among the most important current research questions in ecotoxicology in a SETAC horizon scanning exercise in 2018. Besides the issue of chemicals occurring in mixtures, in real-world ecosystems chemicals represent only one of multiple environmental factors, among them potentially multiple other stressors, that shape the occurrence of organisms in an ecosystem. Whereas ecological studies have often dealt with this complexity by seeking to establish links between stressors and ecological responses based on field experiments and surveys, adopting this approach for chemicals is hampered by their sheer amount and potential interactions between chemicals as well as between chemicals and other environmental factors including stressors. In this session, we will explore novel theoretical approaches (i.e. generalisable theories and approaches) that allow to predict the responses of individuals, populations, communities and food webs to chemicals or multiple stressors. Examples for theoretical approaches represent coexistence theory, trait-related theories (e.g. niche theory), meta-community theory and bioenergetic approaches. The session invites contributions from all ecosystems and methodical approaches (e.g. laboratory, mesocosms, modelling) that test theories or suggest theories that enhance our capacity to predict the responses of organisms in real world ecosystems to chemicals.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have emerged as a research priority across multiple disciplines due to their persistence and prevalence across multiple environmental compartments, along with their potential to cause adverse health effects in humans and wildlife. Several legacy PFAS display bioaccumulation and biomagnification in aquatic and terrestrial food webs. Research to date has provided insight into the environmental occurrence and distribution of PFAS, yet has generally focused on a small subset of perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids (PFSAs). Moreover, existing research is limited in temporal and spatial coverage, resulting in patchy information describing PFAS in select species, habitats, and time-scales. Significant data gaps exist and continue to grow, as long-chain PFCAs and PFSAs are replaced with shorter-chain and structurally diverse alternatives, expanding the range of analytes that need to be understood in terms of environmental occurrence, fate and transport, exposure, and toxicity to humans and wildlife. Furthermore, the number of contaminated sites and habitats continues to increase around the globe, requiring continued research to understand the behavior, fate, and exposure risk of PFAS within new and variable biotic and abiotic conditions. This session aims to provide a platform for individuals from academia, industry, government, and NGOs to share current and ongoing research addressing detection, remediation, transport, fate and bioaccumulation and food web dynamics of legacy and emerging PFAS. We particularly welcome submissions in the following areas: – Multimedia occurrence, distribution, and monitoring of PFAS – Detection of PFAS and sensors for monitoring PFAS contamination in the multi-media environment – Field and modelling research describing the occurrence and bioaccumulation of novel PFAS in specific habitats or food webs, including terrestrial, avian, and aquatic food webs – Mechanistic studies that advance the understanding of bioaccumulation of both legacy and novel PFAS – Research that advances understanding of precursor biotransformation and unknown PFAS in overall PFAS bioaccumulation dynamics – Development of cost-effective, feasible, in-situ remediation and destruction technologies

Modelling plays a crucial role in assessing the environmental release, transport, fate and exposure of chemicals in the natural environment. Complementary to field measurements, models can integrate knowledge from different sources, serve as a platform to assess the main drivers of contaminant fate and predict exposure concentrations in different (future) scenarios. This is a critical element in any chemical risk assessment, aimed at reducing pollution in society. Recently, the emergence of advanced materials with unconventional physicochemical properties, the availability of complex environmental data, and easier access to technologies such as high-performance computing, has led to significant advances in exposure modelling. For example, new modelling conceptualisations have been developed for complex substances and contaminants of emerging concern, such as engineered nanomaterials, multi-component and high-aspect ratio particulate matter, plastics and chemical mixtures. Often these advances have been driven by research towards specific goals or contaminants, but their approaches can be broadly applicable and can feed across to other disciplines. This session provides a platform to highlight such advances, including how these bring benefits to exposure assessment and regulatory approaches. In particular, the session aims to discuss how advances in various fields of exposure modelling can identify common challenges and strategies that could benefit models for different contaminant types. We welcome any presentations that can provide inputs to exposure assessment, from life-cycle and material-flow analysis models that provide release estimates, to process-based or statistical fate models that predict concentrations in one or multiple environmental compartments. Topics of interest include extension of models to different contaminants, incorporation of spatial and temporal considerations, novel validation of modelling approaches, data-driven and machine-learning strategies, provision of user-friendly interfaces, best practices in sharing and documenting open-source software and the identification of common modelling challenges and approaches to solve these across contaminant domains. We also welcome contributions and discussion on how exposure models can be applied by different stakeholders and contribute to informing risk assessment and regulation.

‘Emerging’ contaminants is a broad term used to describe a number of environmental pollutants that are as yet unregulated and could pose a threat to the environment and human life. While there are thousands of different chemicals emitted into the environment each day, only a few hundred are regulated in any region thus raising the possibility that unregulated ’emerging ‘ contaminants could far outnumber the number of currently regulated environmental pollutants. While toxicological studies to determine if many of these unregulated chemicals pose a threat to the environment or humans is carried out, monitoring and occurrence of these chemicals is required. This session will explore the advances in analytical methods for chemical and biological emerging contaminants that allow for their sensitive, reliable and robust detection in the environment. Research relating to the occurrence, monitoring and fate of emerging contaminants in the environment is also welcomed. Modern analytical techniques employing mass spectrometry or bioassays along with advances in sample collection & preparation and computational and data analysis advances are also within the scope of this session.

The development and application of new analytical and experimental approaches continues to be crucial for studying and quantifying key properties, partitioning, dynamics, exposure and the overall fate of organic chemicals. This session is dedicated to new methods and new applications of existing methods including but not limited to: (1) Sampling is the first and often determining step in environmental analytics. Passive sampling can for instance enrich concentrations of target chemicals by orders of magnitude relative to the sampled medium, measure time integrated concentrations or determine their thermodynamic potential (i.e., chemical activity). (2) Analytical instruments have shown a tremendous development over the last decades with regards to sensitivity, selectivity and the ability to resolve complex mixtures. Automation of instruments has not only increased throughput but also precision and reproducibility, and miniaturization of instruments has been critical for many field applications. (3) Analytical measurements directed at determining key substance properties, such as water solubility and partition ratios between water, air, octanol, lipids and polymers, are also important. Whereas it is straightforward to measure such properties for some chemicals, there are often substantial methodological challenges to measure outside a certain chemical space. (4) Combining biological tests with modern analytical techniques in the best way is also crucial. (Eco)toxicity tests should in most cases be conducted at constant test substance concentrations, which requires analytical confirmation and in some cases also experimental control of test concentrations (e.g. passive dosing). Biodegradation kinetics tests are increasingly conducted on mixtures of chemicals and at lower, more environmentally relevant concentrations, which requires dedicated analytical methods. We welcome all submissions on new analytical and experimental approaches that can make a difference within environmental research and testing of organic chemicals.

Air pollution comprises complex mixtures of chemicals that are harmful to human health and the environment. It is considered as the major environmental risk factor in the incidence and progression of some diseases, and accounting for 4.2 million deaths per year. Nevertheless, poor air quality not only harms human health, it also affects the structure and function of ecosystems, often far away from the emission sources. Air pollutants, including gases, particulates and biological molecules, are released into the atmosphere from a wide range of sources, including industry, transport, agriculture, waste management, households and natural sources. Most research on air pollutants has been limited to single air chemicals and fewer studies have addressed the complex mixture of compounds present in ambient air and their interactions. Understanding the impact of these pollutant mixtures to human and environmental health is crucial for air quality regulation by governmental authorities and for implementation of mitigation policies. The contributions to this session will include research about: (a) sources, chemical monitoring and fate of air pollutants and their mixtures; (b) toxic effects of air pollutants on human and environmental health, (c) air pollution and climate change, (e) bioaerosols and environmental health. Novel approaches employing the latest analytical, computational and biotechnological methodologies (and their combination) to investigate air chemical mixtures and its impact to human health and the environment are welcomed.

The session will focus on scientific advances (i) in the field of bioconcentration, bioaccumulation behavior, biomagnification potential, and biotransformation capacity of Microplastics, Nanoplastics, and Emerging Contaminants of concern in marine-coastal ecosystems, freshwater, and terrestrial environments; and (ii) the use of bioaccumulation science and metrics for bioaccumulation assessments. Presentations on new developments in the testing of these substances, as well as methodologies for assessing and modeling bioaccumulation and biomagnification, are welcomed. Presentations addressing the bioaccumulation of new emerging chemicals of concern, such as chemicals in microplastics/nanoplastics, flame retardants, ionizable organics and/or pharmaceuticals, PFAS, complex natural substances, and mixtures are also included in the session. Foodweb modeling approaches in different biological species/taxa (e.g., plants, fungus, invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans) for researching the bioaccumulation process as well as research investigating the application of new methods (e.g., contaminant adsorption/sorption on microplastics, passive sampling and dosing) in lab and field studies are also invited. We welcome contributions from scientists in academia, government, industry and non-governmental organizations that aim to advance bioaccumulation science and hazard/risk assessment of bioaccumulation.

Substances that are persistent in the environment and mobile in the aquatic environment pose a risk to human and environmental health. They are named persistent, mobile and toxic (PMT) substances or very persistent and very mobile (vPvM) substances. These substances are currently introduced in EU´s chemicals legislation, as part of the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) of the EU Commission. Though several PMT/vPvM substances are in use, we only have information on the environmental presence of a fraction of these substances. This is because the most mobile contaminants in the aquatic environment are the most difficult to measure. Once emitted into the environment, these substances can move far from the point of release and remain circulating in the water cycle for long periods of time. The same intrinsic substance properties that make them persistent and mobile might hinder water treatment processes, such as degradation by ozone and UV or their retention via filtration using activated charcoal. This session welcomes case studies of emerging PMT/vPvM substances, including biomonitoring, methods for analysis, biomarkers and other observations on biota. New risk assessment tools, covering both transport and toxicity, will address mechanisms involved in these mobile and often ionic substances. Also emerging cheminformatics and non-target analysis are currently developed to deal with these challenges. Also welcome are solutions, including regulation, the essential use concept, safer alternatives, alternatives assessment and grouping methods (e.g. for PFAs). Recently several new solution technologies are attracting increasing attention. The aim of this session is to stimulate the interdisciplinary exchange between specialists in fate and transport, exposure assessment and water monitoring on the one hand, and experts in hazard assessment, risk mitigation and regulation on the other hand. We expect presenters from chemical producers, downstream users, regulatory authorities, NGOs, water suppliers, scientists and of course students. Come and present your work about getting control of a PMT/vPvM substance and discuss your case study with a wide audience.

The Arctic is experiencing unprecedented changes with rising air temperatures, sea ice retreat, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, and changing food webs. The annual average warming in the Arctic is twice that of the global mean, annual precipitation is increasing towards more and more rain, and the Arctic Ocean is projected to be ice-free in the summers in the near future. These changes have the potential to directly and indirectly impact the sources, transport pathways, fate and accumulation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and chemicals of emerging Arctic concern (CEACs) in the Arctic environment. Consequently, the exposure of Arctic fish and wildlife, as well as indigenous people, to these contaminants can change. The Arctic is thus a sentinel for the world in terms of potential impacts of climate on contaminant fate and exposure. Modelling studies have attempted to describe the potential effects of increasing temperatures on the long-rang transport of POPs and CEACs to the Arctic. Observations of ecological changes, e.g. changing habitats and predator/prey relationships, can have implications for contaminant exposure. Ongoing research and monitoring in the Arctic over the past 20 to 30 years has resulted in long-term time series for POPs and CEACs in air, biota, snow and ice which can be studied in relation to changes in climate parameters and species’ dietary shifts in changing food webs. The goal of this session is to provide a forum for the latest research results on the interactions of climate change and organic contaminants in the Arctic. While this topic is circumpolar in breadth, much of this research is led and conducted by environmental chemists and ecotoxicologists in Europe and therefore very appropriate for a SETAC EU session. The session will address, but not be limited to the following key issues in this field: The role of primary vs. secondary sources of POPs in a warming climate; will how climate change may exacerbate or diminish contaminant transport to and accumulation in the Arctic; the importance of local sources as human activity in the Arctic may increase in a warming Arctic ; the certainty of predictions how old and new environmental contaminants, including microplastics, might change in a changing future climate; identification of key climate change-driven physical and/or ecological processes that might affect levels of POPs in the Arctic, and links between temporal trends of POPs in biota and changes in climate parameters and/or food webs.? The session will include presentations from the recent (fall 2021) Arctic Assessment and Monitoring Program (www.amap.no) assessment on the influence of climate change on POPs/CEACs in the Arctic. All research studies including field and laboratory observations, as well as studies on combined effects of multiple stressors, climate change and modeling of Arctic contaminants are welcomed.

The modelling of fate and exposure of pesticides in the regulatory context is under continuous development due to new scientific knowledge. This continuous adaptive management process is necessary to ensure more robust risk assessments for regulatory decision making. Currently, assessments increasingly aim at better mechanistic, process-oriented understanding of environmental processes. This improvement is gained by in-depth investigations of factors that drive pesticide transport (degradation and metabolism, sorption, plant uptake, and elucidation of the formation and potential release of bound residues) and allows transforming intrinsic uncertainty into explained variability, and progress towards more realistic risk assessments and improved risk management of pesticides under regulatory point of view Several new and refined experimental and modeling methods have recently been developed, and the planning and interpretation of environmental fate assessment studies has improved by the targeted integration of modelling these approaches. Importantly, new approaches must combine processes at different temporal and spatial scales, encompassing not only laboratory studies, but also field studies and long-term monitoring campaigns in different environmental compartments. The objectives of this session are to share among academic, industrial and governmental regulatory experts new experimental and modelling approaches for better mechanistic and integrated understanding of environmental pesticide processes, and the consideration of these new insights in the risk assessment to improve the risk mitigation of pesticides. Two complementary foci are envisioned for this session: a) Sharing recent developments of environmental fate and mitigation modelling under different regulations: new guidance documents, requirements and model developments. New model or scenario developments shall be presented considering the spatial and temporal variability of pesticide exposure and fate across different environmental compartments. Special emphasis may be given to the spatiotemporal modelling of pesticides in surface and groundwater. b) Comparison of modelling results and monitoring data to allow an evaluation of their conceptual basis in relation to protection goals, which quite often are only implicit in the underlying legislation. The regulatory use of fate models and scenarios for pesticides shall be discussed in the light of targeted experiments or representativeness analysis as well as monitoring results. KEYWORDS: Pesticides, Groundwater, Surface water, , Monitoring, Mitigation, Regulation, Risk assessment,

Microplastic (MP) particles are small plastic particles (SPP) found in different environmental compartments: aquatics, soil, and air. Even with a very radical and unlikely response to this environmental crisis, in which the global production of plastics comes to a full halt, plastics will remain prevalent, and their adverse impacts will persist in aquatic systems for centuries. Despite the recent years’ advances in quantifying MPs and assessing risks associated with their exposure, there still exists important knowledge gaps particularly regarding particles in the low micro- and nano-meter range, in terms of behaviour, transport, fate and risks, due to technical challenges (e.g., isolation, quantification, and characterization). Furthermore, the size, complexity, and diversity of MPs, and SPP in general, represent a challenge to study their dispersal and to achieve detailed qualitative/semi-quantitative/quantitative characterization in ‘real-world’ environmental samples. Concerns associated with the presence of SPP has led to the search of potential more environmentally friendly alternatives. Bioplastics have been assumed as a potential alternative to petroleum-based polymers but the knowledge regarding their fate and effects under environmental conditions is also scarce. This session aims to bring together researchers of different backgrounds (e.g. toxicologists, analytical chemists, ecologists, physicians) working on different environmental and biological matrices to review and discuss the current understanding of the risks posed by MPs to environmental and human health, alone or combined with other environmental contaminants, address new and improved methods for accurate study of behaviour, fate and effects, highlight key knowledge gaps and contribute to harmonization of methodologies and reporting to allow increased knowledge and data comparability. Overall, this session welcomes studies providing empirical data of plastic presence and distribution in environmental compartments; transport pathways and factors that affect their distributions; methodologies for evaluating its effects on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems as well as on humans. Submissions on how best to assess and address MP pollution from a technical, societal and policy perspective are also welcome. This session will provide an important and timely outlet for emerging research on plastic pollution and fits well with the overall meeting theme to move towards a reduced pollution society.

Decision making at contaminated surface water sites routinely relies on model predictions of how exposure concentrations of risk drivers may evolve over time in water, sediment, and ecological receptors under various management strategies. Developing robust predictions is challenging due to the complex dynamics affecting contaminant transport in the environment, including chemical fate processes (e.g., sorption, speciation, volatilization, degradation), physical processes (e.g., circulation, sediment transport, watershed and groundwater inflows), human influences (e.g., contaminant loading, remediation, navigation), and contaminant uptake and bioaccumulation within food webs. For practical application, models must strike a tractable balance between explicitly representing and parameterizing processes, taking consideration of the questions to be evaluated and the data available to define initial conditions and constrain model predictions over relevant space and time scales. This session aims to provide a platform to share investigations of contaminant fate and transport in surface water systems (including sediments and biota) and to promote discussion of challenges, innovations, and research needs to advance the modeling of exposure concentrations at these sites. A wide range of scientific topics and spatial/temporal scales are relevant to achieving this goal and are welcomed, from system-wide modeling to assess long-term management strategies (e.g., point source control, sediment remediation) to small-scale in situ or laboratory studies to improve representations of specific processes affecting contaminant fate. Presentations on novel modeling approaches and the characterization of uncertainty are also welcomed, as are studies considering the application of conventional approaches to contaminants of emerging concern (e.g., PFAS, microplastics). Studies that combine modeling and field studies are particularly encouraged.

Little is known about the presence, concentration, accumulation, decomposition and impact of nanoplastics (plastic particles unintentionally formed through use and disposal of larger plastics; < 1 µm) in the environment. However, based on the verified occurrence of microplastics, their presence can be hypothesised as a product of plastics fragmentation. Being colloidal particles or constituents of aggregates in the colloidal phase, they must obey to corresponding transport laws, making them easy to diffuse around the different aquatic compartments and in the air. Moreover, their size makes them more compatible with internalisation by various biota, which has raised concerns over the potential impact/risk on the interconnected elements of the biosphere and, ultimately, human health. Regulatory activities on banning micro(nano)plastics in consumer products are already ongoing (REACH and the state of California), despite the lack of analytical methods to identify and quantify nanoplastics in complex environmental matrices. Moreover, toxicological studies aiming to study the effect of nanoplastics on biota or on human cells are often involving non-realistic or poor environmentally relevant polymeric nanoparticles. The opinion of the session organizers is that these knowledge gaps and material choice are mainly originating from the lack of availability of realistic reference or representative nanoplastics. The scope of the session is to gather information from the research community and discuss with experts: – Ongoing efforts to produce reference and representative nanoplastics – Evaluation of nanoplastics in complex matrices (e.g., soil, organism tissue, sediment) – Results from studies on the physico-chemical properties of nanoplastics and how the results inform the development of standards (e.g. reference materials, methods, etc). – The critical properties of nanoplastics reference materials produced for in in vitro and toxicological studies – How to apply (eco)toxicological methods designed for dissolved substances with nanoplastics The session will collect contributions like: – Perspective studies on the relevance of standards in the field of nanoplastics research – Fabrication methods of representative nanoplastics – Evidences of the formation of secondary nanoplastics from larger particles, either from natural or artificial processes – Characterization and stability studies (including hetero and homo-aggregation) – Ageing effects studies – Novel analytical methods supporting nanoplastics reference material development – The feasibility of using standard (eco)toxicological methods with nanoplastics

Persistence of chemicals in the environment is a key property in the risk profile and in the authorization process of chemicals. This is also considered in hazard based regulatory procedures such as the PBT assessment and the corresponding guidance documents (e.g. ECHA R.11, 2017 for REACH). In the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals are undesirable in the safe and sustainable-by-design approach. It is therefore crucial to clearly understand how a chemical is designated as persistent and the implications for future chemicals and on the design of sustainable chemicals. Currently, a chemical is primarily considered persistent if it exceeds environmental medium-specific biodegradation half-lives. Degradation half-lives in water, soil, and sediment are determined based on standardized transformation tests, namely the OECD 307, 308, and 309. However, the standard OECD biodegradation tests were developed decades ago and do not adequately address the current understanding of persistence. Since then there has been progress in analytical tools, microbiological methods and theory, degradation models, and the awareness of underlying processes has increased significantly. For example, modern microbiological tools allow a rapid and inexpensive determination of the microbiome providing relevant information on the degrader population present in environmental samples. These methods may be employed in degradation tests. The OECD 301 test series (ready biodegradability) can also be used to garner additional information on the biodegradability of chemicals. Non-standard tests and other methods, such as monitoring studies and QSARs, can be used as part of a weight-of-evidence when assessing persistence. Another field of progress is the determination of “bound residues” or non-extractable residues (NER), which have long been ignored but are now re-considered in P assessment. Academia, industry, and regulators therefore see the need and opportunity for an update and improvement of test methods, strategies, and regulations for environmental persistence assessment. Presentations may have as content: – New methods for half-live determination, including application examples and update or modification of existing methods. – Degradation kinetics beyond first order fits, e.g. second-order, bi-phasic kinetics or other; Novel QSARs for biodegradation. – Methods for non-conventional compounds (e.g. microplastics, mixtures, difficult-to-test substances). – Consideration of NER formation in persistence assessment: characterization, standardized procedures, analytical tools, modeling, remobilization and implications for persistence assessment. – Translation into regulatory practice. Contributions are welcome from academics, industry, stakeholders, authorities, and environmental laboratories and can address theoretical insights or practical challenges.

To date, the focus of most contaminant of emerging concern (CEC) research, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, flame retardants, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), microplastics, antimicrobial resistance, viruses etc. has been compartmentalized, e.g., examining selected chemicals or microorganisms, human health or ecological health effects. These artificial divisions limit understanding of the complex interactions that occur in the environment. As competition for water resources increases, wastewater and drinking water will become even more closely linked, and natural attenuation processes (e.g., dilution, hydrolysis and photolysis) and management technologies (e.g., sorption, degradation, and filtration) may be insufficient at managing the contaminants at a level appropriate for human and ecosystem needs. The long-term ecosystem and human health effects are largely unknown particularly for newly emerging contaminants such as microplastics antibiotic resistance determinants and novel viruses. Consequently, wastewater utilities need to identify appropriate management actions to address risks due to such exposures. To optimize the design and operation and management strategies of these systems, various approaches are critically needed: (i) developing a detailed characterization of the processes that govern CEC fate in these systems and in receiving environments; (ii) investigations of the overall toxicity of effluents using bioassays, (iii) methods that can transform wastewater utilities into systems supporting population health monitoring through wastewater-based epidemiology( WBE) and biomarkers of exposure and (iv) estimations of the cost-effectiveness of such technologies, systems and assessments. Analysis through environmental and human-focused epidemiology studies are also appropriate for this session. A particularly timely area for inclusion in this session are studies focused on SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater on subjects ranging from methods, transport and decay in the sewershed, and relation between detections and community infection rates. Studies describing the results of non-targeted and retrospective analyses are of particular interest both for wastewater treatment and soil and crops within the reuse regime. This session welcomes submissions from experimental work at the laboratory, pilot, and field scales, and modeling studies of the fate and removal of CEC in passive, traditional and advanced wastewater treatment systems, including direct or de facto water reuse, as well as decentralized wastewater, and on-site septic treatment, in urban and rural areas.

Urban systems (cities) emit organic micropollutants via wastewater treatment plant effluents, surface runoff (e.g., stormwater), as well as combined sewer overflows into urban surface waters and groundwater. On the other hand, cities abstract water for drinking water supply and industrial processes. The source for drinking water production might or not be contaminated by organic micropollutants. To sustainably manage scarce water resources and to increase climate resilience, most cities will need to develop effective wastewater reuse and stormwater harvesting strategies. Utilities are currently striving to establish suitable technologies for micropollutant management in reuse, not only in the increasingly arid south of Europe and the larger megalopolis in central Europe, but also in Northern Europe. Organic micropollutants in urban waters are a major challenge towards water reuse. Micropollutants in any part of the urban water cycle are not only an environmental or a best practice issue but will directly impact and tighten the management of reclaimed and drinking water quality. In the extreme, drinking water will be produced from surface water originating predominantly from treated wastewater. Current and future water quality management demands for improved treatment technologies and multi-barrier systems. In the urban water cycles, organic micropollutants can undergo different processes such as biotransformation, chemical transformation, phototransformation or sorption during drinking water production, (advanced) wastewater treatment, and stormwater infiltration. The topics in this session include (but are not limited to): (i) sources, transport, concentration dynamics, and toxicological effects of organic contaminant mixtures in urban surface waters, stormwater, groundwater, and (treated) wastewater; (ii) contaminant transformation processes during natural and engineered water treatment, including aquifer recharge practices; (iii) application of novel analytical methods (e.g., non-target screenings) and monitoring strategies (e.g., bioanalytical tools) for regulated compounds as well as new and unknown contaminants of concern; and (iv) advanced technologies for wastewater treatment and stormwater purification with focus on micropollutant abatement. Our session strives to strengthen transdisciplinary approaches to improve our understanding of (a)biotic contaminant transformations, water treatment technologies, and biological effects to mitigate micropollutant-related risks for the urban water cycle.

Marine and freshwater harmful algal blooms (HABs) are defined as an assemblage of eukaryotic or prokaryotic plankton that can differentially produce toxins, resulting in deleterious conditions, and cause negative health, ecological, or socioeconomic impacts. Deleterious impacts include, but are not limited to, changes in physiochemical parameters, decreased aesthetics, the release of toxins, and alterations in food web interactions. In addition, threats presented by epiphytic/benthic (attached and/or buried) toxin-producing cyanobacteria have garnered attention due to pet and wildlife intoxications. However, there are still many uncertainties about planktonic and benthic algae, including prevalence, relative abundance, the nature of their life stages, toxin and metabolite profile, and risk to aquatic and terrestrial life. What are the current knowledge gaps related to the proliferation of epiphytic/benthic algae? What research is required to address these gaps, particularly across the freshwater to marine continuum? Do we have enough knowledge to develop in situ and water treatment mitigation plans and predictive models? What tools are available to track and monitor algae and their associated toxins in freshwater and marine environments, and are there new tools that can be used to achieve environmental protection goals? Are there early warning tools that are effective to provide notice of significant toxic events? How can advances in various methods help with analysis and identification of emerging toxins? How can we better approach toxicity assessments for humans, wildlife, pets, and aquatic organisms? How do mixtures of toxins, routes of exposure, and molecular mechanisms impact toxicity? How should we best incorporate ‘omics techniques into HABs research? What are the current regulations and guidance available to address benthic and pelagic HABs and their toxins, and what are the current difficulties in managing the conditions that contribute to toxin production, release, and exposure? What is the contribution of HAB toxins in surface waters to water quality when complex mixtures of toxins, anthropogenic contaminants and other stressors co-occur? How can be effectively couple targeted and nontargeted analyses with effect directed analyses to identify causative toxins? To help address these questions, the objective of this session is to exchange information on the distribution, detection, identification, health endpoints and pathways of exposures on public and private lands and interaction of benthic and planktonic algae and their associated toxins and to inform the development of additional management tools and approaches to reduce occurrence and improve response to HABs issues, from genes to satellites.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the ubiquitous presence of plastic pollution in urban and remote environments. Nanoplastics have recently emerged in the discussions of scientists, regulators, and the public as the continued environmental degradation of macro- and microplastics generates a substantial burden of nanoplastics in various ecosystems. While nanoplastic particles themselves have not (yet) been widely documented in the environment, there is increased concern that this size fraction of plastic may be more extensively distributed and hazardous than larger-sized plastic particles. Ultimately, the different physical and chemical characteristics of the diverse size classes of plastic pollution (macro-, micro-, and nanoplastics) will result in divergent fate and hazards. Regarding nanoplastics, their unique characteristics will require environmental nanoscientists to develop experimental and field investigations to accurately assess their presence, sources, transformations, transportation, and accumulations pathways in the environment. This session aims to stimulate discussions of research advances to understand nanoplastic distribution in soils, waterways and the atmosphere. We welcome contributions that discuss strategies to investigate the fate and exposure of nanoplastics, including their association with trace metals and chemicals (e.g., additives, adsorbed pesticides, etc.). We additionally encourage contributions that present broader perspectives on nanoplastics in the context of global plastic pollution, especially regarding their flux predictions in comparison to larger sized plastic debris (micro- and macroplastics) or other particles of natural or anthropogenic origins. Finally, we also welcome contributions discussing policy or paths forward for standardizing methodologies for analytics or fate and transport assessments.

As the third iteration of this SETAC session on plastics in the terrestrial environment, we are keen to see the advances made in understanding the impacts and implications of nano-, micro- and macro- plastics, considering the number of researchers who continually push forward knowledge in this area. This is especially true where analytical method developments continue to enhance our assessment of plastics sources, transport, sinks as well as growing understanding of exposure and responses of biota to these materials. There are a wide variety of sources of plastics to terrestrial systems, spanning from direct use, such as application in agricultural practices, to other more diffuse sources (e.g. littering or poor waste management). Through experimental or modeling approaches, understanding the respective contributions of these sources is still needed. Once plastics make their way into the soil, better understanding of their fate is needed, including assessing the downward transport into the soil profile or surface transport away from soils, either to the atmosphere or aquatic systems. In this respect, terrestrial systems will be contributing to aquatic plastics loading, but to what extent and under which conditions this occurs remains to be fully elucidated. While analytical method development has been improving for all size categories of plastics pollution, we are interested to receive contributions on assessing how satisfactory the current sampling and detection strategies are for soil – and if there are specific challenges or considerations which need to be made when assessing plastics loads to soils compared to aquatic compartments. We are also keen to receive contributions which explore how measurable effects correlate with plastic concentrations that have been detected in field soils to date, as well as new and unique studies which assess risk across the diversity of soil dwelling organisms and plants. With the wealth of information constantly being generated in this field, our ambition is to make links between sources and what is detected in the field, using this understanding as a means of informing regulation or protection policies to reduce negative impacts on terrestrial systems. Therefore, we invite submissions which are forward thinking in how to collectively assess the broad range of information about plastics in terrestrial systems so as to make a better soil management plan – or to at least define the key problems are that have been identified to date. Collectively, this session serves as a continued discussion forum about plastics in the terrestrial environment while as a community we increase our knowledge base in this area year after year.

The class of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) has attracted increasing public attention as a large group of emerging global contaminants of high concern due to their high persistence and other hazardous properties (e.g. bioaccumulation potential, toxicity, and/or global warming effects). Numerous studies and control actions have been, and are being, made to understand and reduce the environmental and human exposure to many legacy PFASs, in particular so-called long-chain PFASs. The phase-out of certain long-chain PFASs was an important step toward solving the global environmental concerns related to this substance class. Despite this action, major fundamental obstacles remain to address worldwide contamination by PFASs and their associated impacts on human health and the environment. In particular, elevated levels of many other emerging and novel PFASs have been detected in the environment, wildlife and humans. This session aims to provide a platform for international experts from academia, industry, governments and civil society to share recent and ongoing progress in the understanding of emerging and novel PFASs, regarding analytical techniques, physicochemical properties, hazardous properties (e.g. persistence, bioaccumulation potential, (eco)toxicity and long-range transport potential), occurrence and exposure routes, risk assessment and management options (including proactive “upstream” regulatory measures and “downstream” remediation technologies). Ultimately, it aims to identify and highlight future research needs and thus plot out a roadmap of urgent questions to be addressed in the foreseeable future.

Chemical pollution is one of the major threats to the environment and human health. Its emission to the environment is a direct consequence of the high-volume production, use and disposal of chemicals in modern societies. Biota and humans are exposed to a wide range of potentially hazardous contaminants through inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption. Therefore, the use of biomonitoring tools gives a direct measure of the presence of contaminants and their metabolites in their surrounding environments improving risk assessments. Recent technological advances in analytical chemistry, such as those based on high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), have enabled the determination of a wide broad spectrum of chemical compounds in biological samples using suspect screening and non-target analytical schemes. In addition, conducting cohort studies and employing passive samplers allow to investigate the exposure indexes of chemicals in situ. Therefore, this session focuses on biomonitoring by means of the use of new analytical techniques for assessing exposure in organisms. The proposed session is open to contributions addressing one of the following topics: 1) development of novel analytical methods for extraction and detection of pollutants and their metabolites in aquatic and terrestrial organisms and humans, including off-line approaches and passive samplers to determine the uptake of target and non-target contaminants; 2) assessment of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the main routes of exposure to biota and humans by means of new analytical techniques; 3) qualitative biomonitoring in organisms and humans; and 4) human and biota qualitative assessment.

Humans have impacted the environment enormously, to the point that the term “Anthropocene” is increasingly being coined to describe this era in which environment is entirely affected by anthropic activities. Pollutants [human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, personal care products (PCP), artificial sweeteners, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pesticides, PAH derivatives, benzotriazoles, benzothiazoles, plasticizers, surfactants, disinfection by-products, engineered nanomaterials (ENM), etc., are characteristic substances produced by the human being that are increasingly found in all types of waters (river, lakes, seawater, etc). Present-day, many studies provided information on contaminants’ distribution in abiotic compartments of the environment: air, water, sediment and soil. Surprisingly, studies on the exposure of aquatic biota to these pollutants are still unusual and the identification of the contaminants and the concentrations to which aquatic biota is exposed, scarce.. Many knowledge gaps remain on the accumulation and distribution of these compounds in biota because only very partial data are available, as their determination is complicated and ecotoxicity studies rarely include tissue concentrations and cover few analytes compared to the large number of contaminants that may be present even in a single sample. If little is known about the occurrence of contaminants in biota, even less is known about other aspects such as the biochemical changes that may be due to this exposure and the metabolic biomarkers that within each species may be affected and whose determination could shed light on exposure. This session is devoted studies on the exposure to contaminants, particular welcome contributions within the following areas: i) development of new rapid analytical methods covering the widest possible range of emerging contaminants and their transformation products and/or metabolites in aquatic biota, ii) application of high-resolution mass spectrometry non-target approaches to address significant challenges associated with the transformation and metabolism of emerging contaminants within the aquatic biota. iii) deep understanding on accumulation mechanism (environmental and tissue transfer and distribution) and toxic effects, iii) improved understanding of their sources and occurrence, fate and transport processes, and associated risks and iv) news tools to assess exposure of aquatic biota to these contaminants including metabolomics and other omic techniques. Ultimately, the session aims at center attention on the understanding of the current approaches, identify existing knowledge gaps, outlining new doors open for continued research and providing prospects for future scrutiny to ensure advances in the understanding of aquatic biota exposome.

Ecosystems receive trace elements from a variety of diffuse and point sources, often resulting in uptake, bioaccumulation and toxic effects for organisms and food webs. For some highly bioaccumulative elements, particularly mercury, food web accumulation may ultimately pose risks to human health. The biogeochemistry of trace elements in aquatic (surface and groundwater) and terrestrial ecosystems is defined by complex interactions of physical and chemical variables that control their lability, speciation and biouptake. The biogeochemistry, exposure and impacts of trace elements have been intensively studied for many years and much knowledge has been adopted into regulatory tools, such as bioavailability-based water quality standards for certain metals. However, new policy trends put additional demands on society, industry, and the scientific community – in particular the EU Commission’s Zero Pollution Action Plan and Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. The continuation of underpinning research in trace element biogeochemistry is essential to further develop risk assessment and regulatory approaches that respond to these demands. Such research includes (i) the biogeochemistry of trace elements, particularly mercury, that demonstrate distinctively complex environmental biogeochemistry; (ii) multi-stressor ecosystem effects, e.g. combined effects of various trace elements and/or other chemicals; (iii) relative sensitivities of organisms to trace elements, and elucidation of patterns of absolute and relative sensitivity across organisms and organism groups; (iv) the biogeochemistry and ecotoxicology of less-studied trace elements e.g. molybdenum, chromium, and technology-critical elements (TCEs); (v) natural background concentrations of trace elements, to allow for more robust risk assessment of anthropogenic emissions. The scope of this session covers all of the above. We are particularly interested in receiving contributions on the biogeochemistry, exposure and impacts of mercury. We also welcome contributions on recent advances in the general understanding of the biogeochemistry, exposure and impacts of trace elements. Presentations on research stemming from controlled experimental designs, field-based studies and spatiotemporal modelling efforts are all welcome. We intend that the research presented will aid the implementation of national policy and the development of risk management strategies. This work is critical to the environment and the health of all Europeans.

Measurements of chemicals in the environment, termed exposure data in Europe, are half of the input to ecological risk assessment estimates .Yet, a great deal less attention or regulatory scrutiny is focussed upon monitoring data relative to hazard data. The way these measured data are processed, summarised, and modelled may dramatically influence decision making, regulatory practices, and chemicals management decisions. Schemes and processes are available to determine the suitability of ecotoxicity data for specific purposes (e.g., Klimsch, CRED), but there are very few comparable comprehensive schemes or processes available for evaluating exposure data. This session aims to share best practices and innovative approaches to facilitate the evaluation of the reliability and relevance of measured environmental concentrations and associated supporting information. Reliability of exposure data is currently focused on methodological aspects of the analysis and the characteristics of limited exposure datasets. Other issues also require consideration to assess the reliability of datasets, for example the bioavailable concentration. the degree of censoring and how LoQ values are distributed within the measured data. Other important considerations include the treatment of outliers and identifying whether components are over or under-represented. Relevance in relation to chemical exposure data addresses the suitability of the data for the intended use, and the type and diversity of data that it is appropriate to include from different sources. It is also important to express uncertainties associated with datasets, to provide an opportunity to explicitly recognise when the outcomes reflect the analytical performance or the method of processing the data. This session will showcase research and findings relevant to measured or modelled chemicals risk assessment, prioritisation, state of the environment reporting, for all environmental compartments. These may include combining multiple datasets from different sources, expressing uncertainty in measured and modelled data, assessing reliability and/or relevance of datasets, local, national, or regional monitoring programmes, and overcoming challenges in communicating uncertainties in these types of data. Leonard Oste is also a Chair, but it was not possible to add him.

Plastic pollution may be one of the greatest environmental challenges facing aquatic ecosystems, threatening both organism and environmental health, with potential effects on human health. Ingestion of synthetic particles and fibres has been documented in a variety of organisms, from zooplankton to fish to humans. Microplastics and their smaller counterparts, nanoplastics (MNPs), are a complex suite of pollutants, and thus exposures have been shown to exert a wide array of effects across taxa in the laboratory. Though many studies have documented effects of commercially produced plastics, large gaps remain in understanding the potential impacts of environmentally relevant MNPs such as microfibers and tire wear particles, on taxa ranging from terrestrial, to freshwater, to estuarine and open ocean species. In addition to environmentally relevant particles, consideration should also be given to realistic environmental exposure conditions, exposure timeframes, and the generation of dose-response or concentration-response datasets. For example, we have few data on responses to weathered plastics, which are far more commonly encountered than virgin particles, and our understanding of the potential effects of associated plastic additives and other pollutants is in its infancy. Particle-specific adaptions, such as number-based exposures that also account for mass where possible, particle ageing and transformations, and interaction with biomolecules and/or biofouling should also be systematically explored in lab studies to correlate this with field observations, which will increase the environmental realism of the laboratory exposures. Furthermore, given the number of combinations of polymer types, shapes, and additives, modelling approaches are needed to elucidate the combined effects and multi-dimensionality of this growing problem. With the growing need for evidence-based policy changes for MNP to support the implementation of the Chemicals Strategy for sustainability and the EU Green Deal, it is timely to review where MNP research fits into this discussion. Presentations addressing effects with consideration of some of the aspects discussed above with relevance to risk assessment, and modelling approaches addressing the microplastic challenge across diverse taxa and scales are welcome. The session will highlight empirical and theoretical research investigating MNP exposure and effects. Studies that examine the combined effects of microplastics and climate change-related stressors or phenomena, such as alterations in ocean currents, acidification, hypoxia, increased temperature, varied salinity, or species interactions, either experimentally or using modelling approaches, are also welcome.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the ‘One Health’ approach aims at designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation, and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. One of its major areas of work is dedicated to preventing the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and its consequences for human health. Currently, the continued use (and abuse) of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine, as well as of biocides and other disinfectants from industrial and household applications, are expected to contribute to the deterioration of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and also to the emergence and spread of AMR. Large-scale assessments of the presence in the environment of antimicrobials and their side effects on ecosystems and the environmental resistome are needed to understand their mechanisms of action on the environment and the long-term consequences for human and environmental health. This session invites poster and oral presentations reporting the environmental sources, occurrence, and fate of antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, biocides and metals, but also describing different strategies for establishing suitable environmental monitoring programs. Contributions describing new mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, as well as experimental set ups assessing genetic resistance transfer or population side effects are particularly welcome. Within this scope, we also invite presentations that describe the ecotoxicological effects of antimicrobials in aquatic and terrestrial organisms using environmentally realistic concentrations and exposure patterns. Furthermore, the session will provide a forum for discussing new opportunities to improve the environmental and human health risk assessment of antimicrobials, including the challenges related with the quantification and spread of antimicrobial resistance at the global scale involving different sectors.

Bayesian networks provide powerful approaches for decision optimization, participatory modeling, and uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The application of these tools to adaptive management and risk communication have now been demonstrated. Bayesian network theory and software programs have revolutionized capabilities for generating causal insights in complex science and decision problems. Applications in environmental assessment and management have also steadily increased over a diverse set of problem types. As demonstrated by packed sessions at SETAC North America in Sacramento, SETAC Europe in Helsinki, SETAC SciCon 2020 SETAC Europe 2021 and the application of Bayesian networks is becoming part of the mainstream. In order to support this growing interest, we are proposing a session on Bayesian networks for environmental risk assessment and decision-making to expand the field and as a place for productive discussions about best practices, challenges, and innovations. Presentations should demonstrate the current advances in applied research, provide a number of completed case studies and will initiate and foster discussion about the future uses of Bayesian networks in environmental assessment and management. An international audience is anticipated and international participation from professionals across different career stages and experience levels is encouraged.

Sediments play an indispensable role in the functioning of aquatic ecosystems, since benthic organisms drive ecosystem processes and support biogeochemical cycling and therewith the entire aquatic food web. Simultaneously, sediments are also the largest chemical repositories on earth, where harmful, often persistent hydrophobic compounds accumulate and are retained long after the pollution of the overlying water has decreased. The vast variety of these sediment-associated contaminants may exert harmful effects on the benthic community, be available for uptake and introduced to the food web and can thereby impair ecosystem functioning. Despite this apparent threat to aquatic ecosystems, the European Union Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD) mentions water on 373 occasions, but sediment only 7 times, and does not require the member states to monitor sediment quality. When performed at all, water authorities most often monitor sediment quality by means of chemical target analysis, focusing on only a limited set of specific compounds, potentially overlooking the presence and ecotoxicological risks caused by the myriad of (un)known mixtures of sediment-associated compounds. Therefore, there is a need for integrated sediment quality assessment methods that consider the risks caused by the combined action of all sediment associated contaminants to benthic biota. The aim of this session is therefore to highlight the recent advancements in freshwater and marine sediment quality assessment. To this end we invite contributions covering all aspects of contaminated sediments, ranging from chemical analysis, compounds of emerging concern (CEC), exposure assessment, passive sampling, bioaccumulation and toxicity of sediment-associated contaminants, including the application of novel effect-based methods, and finally risk assessment.

Bioaccumulation is a key component in the assessment of a chemical’s risk to the environment and human health, and a requirement of many global regulations for chemical management. Chemicals that bioaccumulate are of concern because such chemicals have the potential to achieve high concentrations in biota, which can lead to toxicological effects. In support of bioaccumulation assessment, there have been significant progress in the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) while supporting the search for suitable animal alternatives (e.g., OECD 319A and B). These advances have been fundamental in establishing regulations and legislation (e.g., REACH, LCSA), to improve chemical screening, prioritization, and assessment. Although there has been significant progress, interspecific comparisons, in vitro-in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE), difficult-to-test chemicals (e.g., superhydrophobic chemicals), and the lack of more accurate predictive tools continue to be major challenges for bioaccumulation assessments. This session focuses on recent advances in bioaccumulation science, specifically those related to: i) furthering the understanding of bioavailability, bioconcentration, bioaccumulation, biotransformation, and biomagnification of organic chemicals, ii) integrating bioaccumulation data into comprehensive hazard and risk assessments, and iii) developing and applying predictive tools to advance bioaccumulation studies. The session welcomes presentations on nonionic organic chemicals (e.g., legacy or emerging contaminants) that include the analyses of laboratory and field data, and the use of in vitro, in vivo, and in silico methods. Research may include but is not limited to: 1) the use of passive sampler data in improving the understanding of bioaccumulation processes, 2) toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic approaches, 3) IVIVE methods, 4) development of NAMs, including QSARs and in vitro test methods (e.g., assays using cell lines, whole cells, and sub-cellular fractions), and 5) the regulatory application of bioaccumulation data in hazard (i.e. PBT), exposure, and/or risk assessments.

Effect modelling approaches have been developed and applied in the last years to increase our mechanistic understanding of ecotoxicological effects, and they are increasingly recognised as useful method for regulatory risk assessment. This advent of interest in effect modelling methods is at least in parts related to the fact that their use can help to overcome some of the limitations of experimentally-based methods, namely the restrictions of experiments in time and space, the practical limitation of experiments to testing of a few exposure or environmental scenarios only, or the limitation of ecotoxicological experiments to some few standard test species. For individual level effect modelling approaches such as GUTS, the scientific opinion of EFSA on TKTD models published in 2018 provides the grounds for application in regulatory risk assessment for pesticides. However, despite the fact that population, ecosystem and landscape-scale models for use in regulatory environmental risk assessment have been under development for many years, their applicability in a regulatory context has still not practically arrived. In particular, population models could be very useful, since they can be used to screen large numbers of scenarios, to test different landscape settings and to evaluate mitigation measures, hence to perform analyses which are usually not possible in field experiments. On the other hand, population models are only simplified representations of the environment and have to demonstrate their predictive and analytical performance before they can be considered as alternatives for the current regulatory risk assessment model. Therefore, for this session we invite submissions presenting the state-of-art in effect modelling approaches and their possible application under different regulatory frameworks. Ecological effect modelling applications that enhance the mechanistic understanding of ecotoxicological effects at different levels of biological organisation, for example extrapolation of individual effects to population levels, simulations of population dynamics under chemical or multiple stress, multi-species modelling approaches, or refinement of exposure and exploration of effects in landscape settings are welcome. Further applications of ecological models, including TKTD models for lethal and sublethal effects, and population modelling studies and landscape scale models for the quantification of exposure and effects at population levels will ultimately improve our understanding of realism and usefulness of effect model predictions and help in developing requirements for quality criteria and conditions for their use in regulatory risk assessment.

Polymers are versatile large macromolecules consisting of repeating monomer units that are highly diverse consisting of 10.000s different compositions and properties. The use tonnages are in the millions of tons annually worldwide representing billions of Euros in EU alone. After decades of being exempt from regulatory scrutiny, polymers are now receiving increasing interest from chemical regulators. They were exempt as they were presumed to have low toxicological concern due to their significant molecular weight and low water solubility. The underlying assumptions behind this conclusion are now being critically re-examined. It is clear that there are significant gaps in our scientific knowledge on polymers that need to be addressed in order to fully characterize their environmental hazard and risk. Article 138(2) of the REACH regulation allows that the Commission may present legislative proposals as soon as a practicable and cost-efficient way of selecting polymers for registration can be established. For these reasons, conventional risk assessment approaches for chemicals may need to be modified for polymers, including the need of ensuring that they are safe and environmentally sustainable along their entire production and consumption cycle. This session will provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for safety and overall environmental assessment of polymers. Hence, the session will address novel and adapted concepts and approaches needed for the accurate environmental risk assessments of polymers, including fate and exposure analysis and modeling, structure-activity relationships, examples of risk assessments, analytical approaches, and perspectives from non-traditional toxicological effects endpoints. The session will demonstrate case studies to guide the discussion toward recommendations for robust scientific resources and practicable approaches for future regulatory approaches to polymer safety assessment and grouping approaches. The session will bridge the past decades of changing regulatory approaches and scientific discussions needed to bring the aquatic assessment and regulation of polymers up to speed after more than two decades with limited regulatory interest in polymers and thereby elucidate the wider polymer regulatory and scientific challenges we are facing for this class of materials of high importance.

UV filters are an extremely diverse group of emerging contaminants with differing physical and chemical characteristics that determine their occurrence, fate and effects in the aquatic environment. They range in composition from inorganic (mineral) to organic based and are found in a variety of consumer products, including over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, cosmetics, apparel, as well as plastics. UV filters have been detected globally in wastewater, freshwater and marine environments and can be found in multiple matrices, such as, the aqueous phase, biosolids, sediment and biota. Determining the environmental risk of UV filters is an emerging field of research and an increasing number of studies have investigated the hazard (toxicity) of these chemicals to resident organisms including elucidating various mechanisms of action in a variety of species. This session explores sources, occurrence and concentration in water, sediment and biota, fate and effects of UV filters in the aquatic environment (freshwater and marine). The aim of the session is to advance our knowledge of the environmental risk that UV filters pose and continue a scientifically grounded discussion on the impacts and research priorities.

Expert Knowledge Elicitation is a formal process for eliciting and combining judgments from subject-matter experts about the relevant quantities in scientific assessments. Expert opinion and judgment are used in statistical modelling and inference (e.g.,as parameter estimates or as priors in Bayesian inference) and decision-making. Elicited judgments about an uncertain quantity often take the form of a subjective probability distribution for that quantity. If judgments are obtained from several experts, they may need to be combined, unless the experts reach consensus. Because humans are prone to cognitive biases, logical errors and social influences (e.g., peer pressure) when making (probabilistic) judgements, the formal Expert Knowledge Elicitation protocols have been designed to address and minimize these effects. Disciplined and consistent elicitation based on scientific insight from cognitive psychology and probability theory, combined with the domain knowledge and practical experience in environmental assessment can turn subjective judgements into a solid scientific basis for making policy recommendations and assessing relevant risks. Expert Knowledge Elicitation has been used for a long time, and is increasingly being used to fill data gaps and to quantify uncertainty. The quality of the data from elicitation may be hampered by the experts’ limited experience of making probabilistic judgements and/or the poor use of elicitation protocols in practical applications. The purpose of this session is to revisit the methodological framework behind Expert Knowledge Elicitation and to bring up the recent advances within the Expert Knowledge Elicitation, particularly focusing on its usefulness for environmental assessment. We welcome contributions on methodological topics such as: applied examples demonstrating the protocols for elicitation, approaches to combining or conferencing the expert judgements, methods of integrating expert judgements with empirical evidence (e.g., Bayesian inference with informed priors), elicitation of variable quantities or functions, elicitation of overall uncertainty in scientific assessments, elicitation using bounded probabilities, novel approaches to fit probability distributions to expert judgements and methods to extract and use experts’ rationales behind their quantitative assessments. We also welcome contributions about recent developments to strengthen the use and scientific rigour of Expert Knowledge Elicitation when used for assessment.

Immunotoxicity is defined as an adverse effect on the normal function of the immune system resulting from the exposure to a chemical. Such an impairment of the immune system is not just a consequence of general toxicity, because it also occurs at lower concentrations and needs to be considered as a toxic mode of action by itself. In the regulatory context, immunotoxicity is currently tested and considered only with regard to human health. Immunotoxic effects on environmental organisms are currently not specifically addressed in environmental risk assessments. In part, this might be due to the lack of validated and standardized methods in the assessment of immunotoxicity in environmental organisms. Apart from human health, immunotoxicology research is mainly focused on vertebrate organisms such as fish and amphibians (e.g. in the context of the global decline of amphibian populations). So, there is a considerable need for further development in the field of immunotoxicology including the requirement to understand how chemical-induced immunomodulation can lead to adverse outcomes in living environmental organisms (vertebrates and invertebrates) and their populations. The proposed session shall feature a broad range of contributions within the developing field of immunotoxicity in environmental organisms. The link to immunotoxicity as assessed in human health risk assessments provides ample opportunities to learn from and contributions that attempt to build this bridge are therefore highly welcome. Apart from research employing vertebrate organisms such as amphibians and fish, contributions dealing with invertebrate organisms such as mussels, crustaceans, or insects (e.g., bees) are highly welcomed. Particularly welcomed are contributions that advance the field with regard to defining relevant and testable endpoints, both at the biomarker and the apical in vivo level. In addition, we encourage submissions focused on the development of standards for immunotoxicity testing relevant to environmental organisms in view of possibly considering a defined immunotoxic mode of action in a regulatory context, i.e., in the environmental risk assessment. Field studies specifically addressing potential immunotoxic effects or biomarkers related to immune functions in exposed populations are also within the scope of the session.

Enhancing traditional Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) by complementing standard toxicity endpoints with Ecosystem Functions and Services (EF/ES) has been identified as a key area for future enhancements. EF/ES concepts provide the potential for a more holistic systems-based approach ERA and environmental protection, including monitoring, remediation and restoration projects and policies. Yet, the dynamics between biodiversity/ecosystem structure and the delivery of particular EF/ES often remains unclear and context-dependent, as are the societal benefits and costs resulting from them. Hence, there is a need to deepen the understanding of how such concepts can be implemented and integrated into the existing regulatory frameworks. EF/ES approaches are considered to be applicable to all chemical sectors and have been recognized for their potential to contribute to greater ecological relevance when setting and assessing protection goals compared to current frameworks. Furthermore, by providing a common currency across different legislative frameworks, EF/ES concepts provide the opportunity for a better identification and framing of the Specific Protection Goals (SPG), understating of the trade-off between anthropogenic activities and natural environment and ultimately make ERA practices more relevant for risk management. Several challenges have been identified and debated on how to best integrate available ecology, ecotoxicology and modelling based approaches in the development of a systems-level approach in ERA. This session aims to stimulate discussions regarding the opportunities and challenges for complementing current ERA practices using an EF/ES based approach and help framing SPG across different sectors and legislative frameworks. Submissions reflecting on the state of the practice and presenting examples of implementation of such concepts into ERA and decision-making frameworks are encouraged. Focus will be given to: 1) case-studies to substantiate the use of EF/ES approaches in definition of SPG; 2) approaches demonstrating the link and integration of EF/ES into environmental decision-making; 3) examples on how EF/ES approaches are influencing decision-making leading to different choices (or the same but based on different criteria) within risk policy settings.

Soils support an enormous biodiversity, with species and groups interlinked via complex spatial and temporal mutual relationships. Structural and functional biodiversity drives the provision of ecosystem services like nutrient turnover and soil formation, and is a protection goal in several chemical regulations (e.g. plant protection products, biocides). The prospective environmental risk assessment (ERA) for soil organisms exposed to chemicals is based in a first step on lab tests performed mostly in standardized soils with single indicator species exposed to single test chemicals. By contrast, the composition of natural soils is very diverse, and it is questionable whether toxicity influencing factors like sorption and bioavailability are addressed properly. Surrogate species are tested in the lab, however possible gaps in the coverage of the ecotoxicological and ecological sensitivity of species need to be further explored. For instance, fungi, as key actors in essential soil processes, are not included in the current standard test battery, but are supposed to be covered by functional tests. Based on the results of toxicity tests with soil organisms, criteria for classification and labeling of chemicals could also help to identify, prioritize and regulate harmful substances. The soil organism community in the field has to cope with multiple contaminations with different chemicals, as shown by monitoring publications. Community testing is rare, and also the impacts of combined exposure on the interactions between soil organism groups is not well understood. It is therefore a matter of debate whether the protection of soil biodiversity is sufficiently achieved by current ERA schemes when addressing single chemical impacts in isolation. In order to link prospective and retrospective assessment of risks to soil communities, concerted action to monitor the soil chemical and biological state is urgently needed. Knowledge of the situation of soil communities in the field is also necessary to implement the targets of the new European Green Deal, with its key elements ‘Biodiversity strategy for 2030’, ‘Farm to fork strategy’, ‘Zero pollution ambition’ as well as the ‘Soil strategy’, aiming at restoring biodiversity, protecting soils and tackling soil pollution. This session aims at linking the available knowledge on soil ecotoxicology and the results of soil monitoring in the field, in order to check and increase the relevance of risk assessment outcomes in the future. Information helping to understand the variability of sorption and bioavailability effects on the toxicity of chemicals to soil organisms as well as advancing the state of the art on soil ecotoxicology and risk assessment are highly appreciated. Our aim is to understand the long-term impact of chemicals on the biodiversity of in-soil organisms in field soils in the light of multiple exposure and restoration targets.

Chemicals are not the only stressor in ecosystems, indeed sometimes they are not the most important ones. Environmental conditions in the field are seldom optimal, which imply that organisms or populations living in natural systems frequently also experience stress from natural factors. Yet, chemical pressure may modify the tolerance range for natural factors, biotic as well as abiotic. In general, stress can be either defined as the response of a biological system (from a subcellular component to an ecosystem) to internal or external pressures acting on the system. However, stressors are identified with reference to the biological system which they impact and relative to unstressed state. In turn, the intensity of the stress responses may vary from zero to complete inhibition, or compensatory responses may take place which can be perceived as stimulatory responses. The term ‘multiple stressor’ refers to the combination of natural (abiotic and biotic) and anthropogenic stressors, e.g., chemical exposure, thus including `mixture toxicity’. habitat modification, climate change, invasive species, etc. Regulatory authorities, nature conservation and society at large aim at protecting human health and the environment from adverse effects of potentially toxic chemicals. As a result, the abilities to identify and assess the relevance of lethal and sublethal effects of chemicals has been tremendously improved over the last decades, and a regulation framework has been elaborated. However, the potentiality of multiple stressor effects across levels of biological organization has only recently come to the fore. Despite important theoretical advances, there is no comprehensive and validated approach at present to describe and predict the additive, antagonistic and/or synergistic impacts of such stressor combinations. Accordingly, the proposed session is devoted to gathering academics, and scientists working in industry or government to share concepts, models and/or data to better understand responses from multiple stressors exposure. Any questions, methodological, experimental and/or modelling approaches are encouraged to be discussed with the perspective of gaining knowledge on interactions between multiple stressors, their joint effects, deciphering their underlying mechanisms, assessing the ecological relevance of multiple stressors, and to predict effects on species in the field.

For a long time, focus of mixtures has been placed on the exposure of organisms and risk assessment of individual classes of chemicals and more recently this attention on mixtures has been put on the political agenda, e.g., in the Green Deal’s “Chemicals strategy for sustainability”. In the environment, chemicals from a large variety of sources are combined, creating multidimensional mixtures that do not only contain chemicals from one domain or “regulatory silo” but include organics (pesticides, biocides, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals), transition metals, other inorganics and particles. Consequently, the attention is starting to shift towards the broader chemical spectrum of mixtures. These multidimensional mixtures are being evaluated by diverse approaches, including modelling and fate and effect testing of experimentally designed mixtures and environmental mixtures. These approaches allow for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the impact and fate that combinations of various chemical groups have. This session focuses on the different approaches and methods to assess, monitor and determine the fate, effects and risks of these multidimensional mixtures. Contributions that combine components from different chemical domains, e.g., organics and metals or metals and particles are especially encouraged.

Although pesticide registration process follows the most strict regulation of chemical compounds, synthetic pesticides are ubiquitous contaminants in soils and waters and may impact ecosystem functioning, human health, and ecosystem services, such as drinking water supply. Therefore, there is an intensive search of alternative pest management practices to sustain food production along the green transition pathway. Biopesticides are pest management agents that can be divided into three basic categories 1) living organisms (e.g. Entomopathogenic Fungi, Bacteria, Virus and Nematodes); 2) naturally occurring substances, such as plant extracts (e.g. Neem, Rotenone, Pyrethrum, Nicotine, Phytoalexins, Essential oils, etc.), other bioactive natural compounds (Strobilurins, Spinosyns, Avermectins, δ-endotoxin, Milbemycins, etc.) and pheromones; 3) Gene-modified plants producing their own toxins or exhibiting tolerance to specific herbicides. Terms such as “botanicals”; “essential oils”; “natural toxins”; “biologicals”; “plant or microbial toxins”; “plant extracts” are terms referring to naturally occurring substances used for crop protection. Despite the potential of natural compounds to be used in crop protection, some of their characteristics and other limiting factors may reduce their practical application. Plants produce a wide variety of toxic compounds to defend themselves against pathogens and used in competition with other plants. There are at least 20,000 plant toxins, which often are produced in high quantities, and many have medium to high toxicities. Most are polar with high water solubility and are thus mobile compounds, but with a strong variation in biodegradability. In general, their environmental fate is unknown, and regulation of their use is not rigid or non-existing. A new group of “low-risk” pesticides that is in the pipeline and is expected to be subject to risk assessment procedures in the near future is based on the gene silencing mechanism: RNA interference (RNAi). Apart from plant produced toxins, algae and microorganisms produce toxins in high quantities, some of which are very toxic. Thus, mycotoxins and mycotoxin derivatives (aflatoxins, ochratoxins, patulin, etc.) may have serious health impacts on both animals and humans. One-third of global food crops deteriorate due to fungal pathogens and their associated mycotoxins. Biopesticides, nanoformulations, RNAi-based pesticides, mycotoxins and other natural toxins exhibit diverse modes of action and may have various acute and chronic effects on humans and affect various non-target living organisms. However, their risk assessment and possible registration process needs to be adapted to their differential nature. This session aims at gathering scientists working with natural toxins and biopesticides, including synthesis platforms, slow release and nano formulations. We invite posters and oral presentations reporting the risks coming from natural toxins, biopesticides, nanopesticide technologies and RNAi-based pesticides. Contributions related to regulation practices, legislation gaps and risk evaluation process are also welcome. We propose to focus on environmental sources of natural toxins and biopesticides, analysis and monitoring, fate, transport/leaching and perspectives on future regulation. Within the scope of this session is the ecotoxicological effects of natural toxins, nanoformulation of natural biopesticides, GM producers of biopesticides, mycotoxins and RNAi-based pesticides.

Multi-Constituent Substances (MCS), substances of Unknown or Variable Composition, Complex Reaction Products, and Biological Materials (UVCBs), and the recently named More-than-one-constituent substances (MOCS) are substances which are routinely manufactured or imported into various countries containing multiple constituents but which are not intentional mixtures. These include substances such as essential oils, resins, petroleum substances, surfactants etc., and constitute a significant volume of the chemicals on the market. Because of fluctuations in the composition of their source material and/or manufacturing process, marketed MCS/UVCB/MOC substances usually contain constituents that may not be characterized and/or may change in concentration. The composition of these substances and the combination of their constituents’ properties pose a unique challenge to the assessment of their fate, exposure, hazard, and potential risks to human health and the environment. Regulatory frameworks, such as Europe’s REACH, Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan, and US’s Toxic Substance Control Act, have highlighted the difficulties of registering these products. There have also been several workshops and taskforces over the last decade dedicated to understanding the best methods for assessing MCS/UVCBs/MOCs. Despite 20-30% of the substances on different chemical registries being MCS/UVCBs/MOCs, there is still no clear guidance on how to optimally assess these MCS/UVCBs. Previous SETAC sessions have addressed the issues associated with MCS/UVCBs and presented approaches for hazard and risk assessment. This session will focus on novel approaches to addressing MCS/UVCBs/MOCs characterisation, exposure, fate, hazard and risk assessment. Presentations on combinations of analytical methods, dosing methods, fate directed fractionation, toxicity testing, biodegradation testing, and bioaccumulation testing are encouraged. Non-testing approaches, like QSARs and grouping/category approaches, for MCS/UVCBs/MOCs are also of great interest, as these offer some of the more pragmatic approaches for addressing the variability in UVCBs. In particular, strongly welcomed are submissions of illustrative, ground-truthing case studies with UVCB, MCS, or MOC substances from different industry sectors (e.g. petroleum, essential oils, chlorinated paraffins) in order to stimulate the sharing of learnings across different UVCB types. Ultimately, this session will aim to address a significant percentage of the chemicals that need to be properly assessed in the bid for a reduced pollution society.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients, their metabolites and degradation products have been found in the environment around the world for several decades now. Main sources are the use of medicinal products in humans and animals but also the release from manufacturing sites and improper disposal. For this reason, the European Commission adopted the European Union Strategic Approach to Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PiE), which focuses on actions to address the environmental implications of all phases of the lifecycle of both human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, from design and production through use to disposal. However, conducting effective environmental risk assessments for pharmaceuticals, which consider transport and fate as well as exposure effects, can be complex and may require the consideration of alternative methodologies, not necessarily applied for other types of substances. This is equally true for existing (legacy) and novel or recently developed drugs, or those with unique use patterns. In particular, many active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) lack good quality hazard and exposure data or such data is not publicly available, and environmental research activity is often disproportionately focused on a limited set of ‘high profile’ APIs – i.e. those with known or suspected environmental hazards or those that are poorly removed by conventional wastewater treatment. In addition, the well-characterised mode of action of APIs in humans means that they are often good candidates for the investigation of behavioural and sub-organismal responses in environmental receptors, and this can result in the potential for a disconnect between responses in organs and tissues and their wider relevance for populations. The aim of this session is to offer a platform to scientists, regulators and stakeholders for discussing approaches and methods on how to respond to these challenges. Particularly welcome are case and feasibility studies on environmental risk assessments in practice, methodologies to address regulatory requirements and specific challenges, new concepts, impact assessments, risk communication, and necessary/potential changes in policy. Interested parties are encouraged to present research and findings relevant to the environmental risk assessment of human and veterinary medicines in any environmental compartment, such as aquatic, terrestrial, and/or biota. This may include: • Monitoring, and environmental fate and effects data (e.g., degradation, transport, metabolism) from both developed countries and low/ – middle-income countries; • Models for predicting environmental fate, exposure, and distribution (particularly for marine and freshwater aquaculture); • The use of screening level or higher tier exposure and effects data to support environmental risk assessments, • Research which links behavioural or sub-organism level responses with population-level effects; • Country-specific problems and challenges with respect to pharmaceuticals in the environment (e.g. areas with limited sewage connectivity); • Case and feasibility studies on environmental risk assessments in practice; • Methodologies to address regulatory requirements; and • Challenges encountered in the risk management of pharmaceuticals.

By 2050, the world population is projected to reach nine billion people with three quarters living in cities. The global development path over the next three decades will be marked by shifts in land use and weather patterns, and by changes in the way water and food resources are obtained and managed all over the world. These global changes (GCs) will affect the emissions, environmental transport pathways and fate of chemicals, and thus affect the exposure of the natural environment to chemicals. Future changes may also alter the sensitivity of ecosystems to chemical exposure. Addressing such global and long-term challenges require innovative approaches and therefore collaboration along several dimensions: across nations, disciplines, sectors, and carreer stages. This session focuses on large-scale efforts to meet such challenges and the knowledge and skill sets required by the next generation of scientists in research, consultancy, industry and governmental decision-making. Topics with relevance for this session are typically, but not exclusively: (1) approaches to assess how the inputs of chemicals from both rural and urban environments and their fate and transport are affected by different environmental conditions in different regions, and how this will change under GC scenarios in order to assess the likely increase in chemical risks to human and ecosystem health; (2) approaches to identify potential adaptation and mitigation strategies that can be implemented in the short and medium term to abate unacceptable changes in risks, and (3) novel modelling tools applicable for industry and policy makers that allow the impacts of a range of GC-related drivers of chemical risks to be assessed and managed. This session welcomes any relevant contributions from international efforts to address global challenges by innovative approaches. We will in particular encourage presentations by early stage researchers (e.g. the Innovative Training Network ECORISK2050) and feedback from the audience to these presenters.

Bioremediation and Phytoremediation strategies as nature-based solutions for recovering contaminated soil, water and sediment have been shown to be effective and low cost solutions. These green technologies can be successfully applied on multi-contaminated (organic and inorganic pollutants) ecosystems. This session since 2017 is a reference point in SETAC Annual Meetings where participants from all the world exchange their knowledge and new research developments on this topic. Applications both at lab and field scale will be displayed considering organic and inorganic pollutants (POPs, pesticide, heavy metals), emerging contaminants (e.g. pharmaceuticals, microplastics) and chemical mixtures. The effectiveness of different strategies such as biostimulation and bioaugmentation, phyto-stabilization, phytoextraction will be illustrated and discussed. Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) as a valuable tool for recovering polluted soils and water will be also included. MFCs benefit from capabilities of microbial biofilms developed on the electrodes which use the terminals as catalysts for metabolic activities, including contaminant degradation. The bioavailability of potentially hazardous organic contaminants (POPs, pesticides, biocides, pharmaceuticals, etc.) in soil and sediment is an important issue to be investigated for understanding and improving the bioremediation strategies. Therefore, contributions on bioavailability-oriented biological treatment of soils, sediments or waters are also welcome. Particular attention will be focused on the properties, quality and biological activity of organic matter (e.g. humic preparations) and amendments (biochar, compost) for sorption of pollutants and/or increase of contaminant degradation in combination with various bioremediation strategies. Moreover, research advances on the complex bacteria-contaminant and bacteria-plant synergic interactions mediated by plant exudates and secondary metabolites in the rhizosphere will be also illustrated. Finally, the potential combination of bioremediation strategies (e.g. phytoremediation) with providing valuable sources of renewable biomass, in line with the sustainability criteria of the European Green Deal will be discussed. For example, the biomass cultivated for plant based remediation purposes in metal polluted soils can be thermally treated (e.g. pyrolysis) and used as potential fuel for obtaining bioenergy.

Tire wear particle (TWP) emissions per capita are estimated to be around 0.8 kg/year worldwide. Anthropogenic polymeric particles such as TWP, TRWP (tire and road wear particles), and micronized rubber particles (‘microrubber’, MR), in general, contribute significantly to the plastic pollution in our oceans. So far, there is no viable alternative to rubber tires. In addition to tire wear and road surface abrasion from cars, planes and bikes, microrubber is likely to enter aquatic systems from a variety of sources, such as surface run-off of road dust, dispersion from artificial turfs, and the wear and tear of rubber pavements and playground surface systems. The smaller particles may remain in the air and contribute to the fine particulate matter problem. TWPs and MR are often classified within broad scope of ‘microplastics’ but they are increasingly being viewed as a distinct and complex contaminant class based upon the methods of analytical detection and purported modes of toxicity and negative biological effects. In terms of composition, tires typically consist of blends of styrene-butadiene rubber, polybutadiene rubber and natural rubber mixed with carbon black, as well as various other chemicals that have been shown to be leached from rubber tires and classified as PAHs, trace metals and anti-oxidants. Particle detection is an analytical challenge, and it is difficult to distinguish between the toxicological effects of the particle itself and those caused by the leached chemicals. As a result, TWPs and MR in all their forms can pose a unique toxicological challenge, and research in this area is still in its infancy. Due to the complexity of the problem, the challenges are enormous and require a multidisciplinary approach. The aim of this session is to present studies that (1) demonstrate the occurrence of TRWP/TWP/MR in the environment, (2) investigate the ecotoxicological effects of these particles, (3) provide a platform for all stakeholder perspectives and a forum to integrate knowledge from academia, industry, NGOs and policymakers, and (4) discuss mitigation strategies and innovations that will aid in the development of tires and roads that are more durable and emit far less harmful particles into the environment.

Chemical regulations seek to protect human health and the environment by identifying chemicals that may be of high concern and pose potential risks. These regulations and related legislation (e.g., REACH, LCSA, CEPA) also highlight the need to implement New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in the chemical evaluations, reducing animal (vertebrate) use and managing resource use while still protecting human health and the environment. Understanding the relationships between toxicokinetics (TK; what the organism does to the chemical) and toxicodynamics (TD; what the chemical does to the organism) is critical to link external exposure or environmental concentrations to body burdens and then to toxic effects. Biokinetic processes play an important role in ecological and human health assessment by influencing the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of toxicants in organisms. Significant progress has been made to obtain TK data in various species, which can be utilized in diverse contexts for chemical assessments (screening, prioritization, substitution, risk assessment) and can be used to develop new TK models and to refine existing ones. Efforts to collect existing or generate new TK data in various species (mammals, fish, invertebrates) both in vitro and in vivo have increased, and as a result, additional computational (in silico) models to predict TK parameters and taxa-specific PBPTK models have been developed. Models simulating the TK and TD of substances in organisms provide the link between the two processes to translate exposure to the time course of effects, including on biomarkers of toxicity. Approaches to TK simulation include classical compartmental models, non-compart¬mental models, and physiologically based models. TD model simulation links the internal concentration or the concentration of toxicants at sites of toxic action to biological responses, which are induced by the molecular mechanisms and physiological mode(s) of action of the toxicants. A wide range of endpoints have been considered in TK/TD assessment, ranging from molecular biomarkers to cell-, tissue-, organ- and life-history traits. This session will highlight topics including: • TK data collection or method development in various species and taxa; • TK or TD model development, application, and sensitivity analysis (e.g.. QSAR, PBTK, TK-TD, PBTK-TD); • Integration of underlying uptake and toxicity mechanisms in modelling bioaccumulation and toxicity; • Extrapolation – cross-species as well as from the molecular to population level; • Regulatory applications (e.g., risk assessment, prioritization / screening, bioaccumulation assessment, mixtures assessment, etc.).

Our understanding of the presence and effects of microplastics in the aquatic environment is readily advancing. This research has highlighted our lack of understanding of the presence and effects of nanoplastics in aquatic environments. Because of their extremely small size and ability to permeate biological membranes, nanoplastics may represent a greater hazard to aquatic organisms than microplastics. This session will focus on clarifying the scientific challenges in transitioning from microplastics research to nanoplastics research. Research areas associated with these scientific challenges include the need to (i) standardize methods for their isolation and extraction from environmental samples, (ii) establish analytical methods for detecting and quantifying nanoplastics in environmental media, (iii) investigate the presence and distribution of nanoplastics globally, (iii) evaluate the ability of nanoplastics to serve as a transport medium for and source of conventional and emerging contaminants, and (iv) assess the biological and ecological effects of nanoplastics to aquatic organisms. Addressing these research challenges will ultimately provide the information necessary to determine whether the regulation of nanoplastics is necessary and requires promulgation. To begin to identify these scientific challenges, a platform and poster session titled Transitioning from Microplastics to Nanoplastics Research: Scientific Challenges is proposed for the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry-Europe meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark in May 2022. The goal of the session will be to provide the audience with a current overview of the research challenges associated with nanoplastics in the aquatic environment.

Life cycle inventory models are increasingly making use of open source data and software infrastructures. New initiatives allows faster data collection because less time is spent to find, prepare and align data. New opportunities for faster and more accurate LCAs rely on reliable, interoperable and accessible data inventories. This session invites contributions dealing with such advancements in inventory data collection and modeling as well as tackling other complementary issues such as contributions on harmonization between LCI and LCIA, data validation, and data conversion across different system. The session also encourages contributions on the improvement of the spatial and temporal resolution of LCI data. We encourage the presentations of case studies demonstrating applications of flexible inventory data models and methods to integrate computational and data management tools into the LCI data collection process.

Biodiversity loss is among the top threats humanity is facing and there is the need, as stated in the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, to “better integrate biodiversity considerations into public and business decision-making at all levels”, committing to the development of methods, criteria, and standards “to measure the environmental footprint of products and organisations on the environment, including through life-cycle approaches and natural capital accounting”. To assess biodiversity impacts of products and organisations, it is of paramount importance that scientifically robust indicators are developed to capture impacts on biodiversity from a value-chain perspective, enabling businesses to monitor biodiversity loss, as well as allowing for mitigation strategies to be put in place. Several efforts have been made in the last years to advance the analysis of biodiversity impact in LCA. Nevertheless, existing metrics are poor at capturing the complexities of biodiversity or are not fully operational to be used by LCA practitioners. This shows that the current LCA framework is not yet sufficient to support decision-making based on different sets of biodiversity indicators. In parallel, several non-LCA methods to assess and monitor the impacts of value chains on biodiversity have been developed. An initiative of the European Commission, the EU Business @ Biodiversity Platform, was set up to discuss the links between business and biodiversity at the EU level, and bring together the different methods available. Current initiatives are being carried out with the objective of developing methods and indicators that capitalize on LCA and natural capital accounting towards establishing a more comprehensive, robust, and standardized framework for biodiversity impact assessment and foot-printing of global value chains. This session aims at providing a forum for the discussion on biodiversity impact assessment methods. It welcomes contributions on methodological development of biodiversity impact assessment using LCA and natural capital accounting approaches; case studies; showcase of approaches that help businesses integrate biodiversity and natural capital considerations into business practices. Suitable proposals shall cover the role of specific approaches, their strengths and weaknesses, identify areas of potential improvement and make recommendations for further developments.

Direct farming and land use changes are responsible for around 18-32% of the global GHG emissions. In several countries, the protein consumption per capita is expected to grow significantly. An increasing number of products are designed with bio-based materials, such as natural polymers, bio-fibers, lignin, casein, zein, cornstarch etc. While reducing certain im-pacts, these materials may increase the pressure on land resources even further, with consequences in terms of GHG emissions and biodiversity loss. For example, bio-fuels are pro-posed as an alternative to conventional fossil fuel, sparking debates on their indirect land use change (iLCU) effects. This session invites innovative LCA studies investigating trade-offs of bio-based products, including food, fuels or materials using large-volume biomass components (e.g. renewable fats and oils, lignin, plant fibers). Case studies should preferably include methods assessing iLUC impacts or assess solutions to reduce iLUC–related impacts. Contributions can also deal with novel models, data and impact assessment methods to evaluate tradeoffs of such products and consequential LCAs assessing combined production of bio-based materials. Studies comparing the footprint of several categories of food items are encouraged. Original contributions assessing the impact of large-scale changes in dietary habits towards plant-based protein or other lower impact protein sources are also welcome.

Sustainability is multi-dimensional, involving economic, environmental and social aspects, normative positions, and empirical knowledge. These various dimensions interact in a complex pattern; and the cultural, social, political and regulatory context affects the assessment of these interactions. In this context, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a pivotal method for the identification and assessment of potential environmental impacts of products and services. The use of LCA by different types of public and private stakeholders has expanded and diversified over time. Recently we also assisted a growing interest in the use of LCA and LCA related methods and tools in support decision making (policy and business), along the entire development process, from early problem definition to the evaluation of the final decision implications (e.g. assessing impacts of different options, supporting policy implementation, supporting policy-making for sustainability, etc.). For example, at the EU level different policy initiatives within the European Green Deal, such as the Circular Economy action plan, are enhancing the need to have a supply chain perspective in defining policy goals and in monitoring thereof. LCA can be employed to support policymaking for multiple purposes and based on different approaches. Policies addressing products or consumers require specific LCA methods and tools to, for example, quantify the impact of products and derive overall consumption footprints, monitor improvements, or define benchmarks. Policies implemented at the national scale and with transversal actions benefit from macro-scale assessments, which can also combine LCA with other methodologies such as material flow analysis. However, LCA is a data intensive approach – and especially in early development stages, models require procedures for simplifications, streamlining, assumptions, etc. in order to fill existing data gaps. The past years saw different approaches and/or workarounds emerging, including comprehensive uncertainty & variability analysis, combining LCA with traditional risk-assessment-based approaches, or various proposals for an integration of techno-economic assessment approaches into material and energy-related cradle-to-gate models. These various configurations of LCA methods and tools may support various policy uses. This session calls for contributions addressing the use of LCA for policy support with the aim of reflecting on different scales of assessment, data sources, and policy uses, with the aim of providing a forum for the growing community of scientists working on non-standard LCA approaches to present their advancements. We welcome theoretical contributions, review studies, or case studies discussing the key methodological aspects, challenges and opportunities for using LCA and further approaches in policy. The session is encouraging a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder discussion on how LCA and further developments can better support current policy ambitions.

The goal of this session is to exchange knowledge between Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method developers and LCA practitioners with respect to new developments in LCIA and requirements for making them operational for decision support of industry and policy makers. Life cycle impact assessment is still an evolving field at midpoint and endpoint level. Moreover, the life cycle inventory modelling should correspond in spatial and temporal resolution with the impact modelling of selected impact categories. The level of maturity in environmental modelling varies for each impact category, which poses different questions encompassing simplified approaches to cope with complexity, advanced modelling approaches considering synergistic and antagonistic effects of substance mixtures and impacts of new substances/materials. This session encompasses the entire field of LCIA, namely: – Spatial differentiation of characterization factors for non-global impact categories in a non-standardised environment/world – Consensus approaches for harmonisation of indicators for certain impact categories – Footprint methods for specific product groups – Improvement of impact methods, simplified as well as advanced modeling approaches – Development and improvement of new or under-development methods such as biodiversity and ecosystem services – Linking LCIA with other assessment frameworks such as risk assessment – Development of LCIA methodology linked to Planetary boundaries and Sustainable Development Goals – Integrated interpretation of improved or new impact methods in full LCA studies – Integration of new LCIA methods in software packages, including links with inventory

Companies are working with life cycle thinking (LCT) for different purposes such as marketing, purchasing, investments and strategies, with the objective to reduce the environmental impact from their products and services. In recent years, LCT has also been important for public policy-making and in public procurement. Methods for environmental footprinting of products and services have been and are being extensively developed all over the world. In its communication Single Market for Green Products (SMGP, April 2013), the European Commission proposed actions to overcome problems on the internal market caused by this proliferation of initiatives. The SMGP established two methods, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) to ensure quality and increase transparency of environmental information and to facilitate comparisons between products’, services’ and organizations’ environmental performance. The methods have been continuously developed over the past years and the Circular Economy action plan commits that the Commission will also propose that companies substantiate their environmental claims using Product and Organisation Environmental Footprint methods. Through a combination of market pressure and policy instruments like these PEF\OEF methods, the European Commission intends also to improve the environmental performance of products and services in the European market. The Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, is a response to the The Circular Economy Action Plan, aims to catalyse the shift towards chemicals, materials and products that are inherently safe and sustainable, from production to end of life. In 2022 the Commission will develop criteria on safe and sustainable-by-design by 2022. This session aims at showcase current applications of the PEF\OEF methods as decision support for policy and sustainable product development and gather insights on challenges and future developments. It welcomes submissions on case-studies application as well as related methodological topics such as databases, agricultural modelling, impact assessment methods, normalization, weighting of impacts for a single score, the interpretation of results, the application in actual decision-making processes, communication on products, feedback from industrial initiatives/case studies, policy perspectives, current and future challenges, etc. Further on, the session also invites abstracts including the chemical aspects in the safe and sustainable-by-design approach.

Prospective LCA supports decision-makers in business and policy to anticipate, prevent, and minimize the environmental impact of emerging technologies and emerging product systems. It can as well support engineers along the entire development process of a technology. This technology development process begins with the conceptualization and pilot implementation at a low technology readiness level and ends with market penetration at a high technology readiness level. Moreover, the development of new technologies opens up new types of supply chains and, via competition and combination with incumbent and other competing and complementary emerging technologies, into the shaping of new systems of technologies that we can define as emerging product systems. Assessment-wise methodological challenges exist in each of the four ISO phases when conducting a prospective LCA due to the intrinsic and manifold sources of uncertainty. In this session, the main focus is addressing these challenges along with their potential solutions to enable the comprehensive and robust conduct of prospective LCA studies of emerging technologies and emerging product systems. While contributions should primarily focus on the development and testing of new methodological frameworks, approaches, and tools, case studies of novel emerging technologies and emerging product systems applying prospective LCA are also welcome. We invite contributions addressing issues related to the effective upscaling of LCIs using simulations, learning curves, proxy technologies, or technology expert knowledge. As LCA is a data-intensive tool and in the early stages of process development data is scarce, procedures are needed to fill such data gaps. Contributions are welcome proposing new approaches and critically discussing existing ones that solve these issues, such as the use of best-case estimates, stoichiometric relationships, streamlining, simplifications, or assumptions. Additionally, we invite contributions demonstrating the integration of other assessment tools such as material or substance flow analysis, risk assessment, or neuronal networks within prospective LCA. In order to adequately address the temporal dimension in prospective LCAs, defining the time horizon of the technology developments, handling technology readiness levels as well as considering background system transitions are all critical tasks. We thus invite contributions demonstrating new modeling approaches to model technological scenarios like the use of integrated assessment models in the background system, the modeling or stakeholder-based development of consistent future scenarios. Since the interpretation and communication of a prospective analysis and related uncertainties remain challenging tasks, we finally invite contributions on the application of statistical tools to better explore, understand, and present uncertainty such as and beyond global sensitivity analysis, stochastic simulation, and pedigree approaches.

This session calls for contributions that address Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) aspects of chemicals, materials and products, a novel concept in the EU-Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). The European Green Deal sets ambitious goals to transform the EU’s economy for a more sustainable future, and better protecting human and environmental health, by tackling chemical pollution across sources and life-cycles. To support this ambition, a systemic transition in chemicals design, production and consumption is proposed by the Commission in the CSS action plan. A key element is the development of SSbD criteria for chemicals, materials, and products. Such criteria should consider the function, avoiding volumes and chemical properties that might be harmful to human health or the environment, and ensuring that overall sustainability is considered from a life-cycle perspective. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), chemical substitution and risk screening are key tools to assess the environmental impacts of chemicals, materials and product systems, for which SSbD criteria will become critical. This increases comprehensiveness but also complexity of the assessments, so that improved digitalized methods are essential. The development of SSbD criteria is closely related with other EU Initiatives such as the Sustainable Product Policy Initiative (SPPI), giving priority to sectors that affect vulnerable populations and with the highest potential for circularity, such as textiles, packaging including food packaging, furniture, electronics and ICT, construction and buildings. The SSbD ambitions pose clear challenges to both the LCA and risk assessment (RA) communities in SETAC, as impact- and risk-based evaluations need to be considered and advanced towards achieving overall sustainability. The development of an SSbD framework that combines sustainability, safety and circularity dimensions in a coherent, scientifically sound, yet pragmatic manner, entails many challenges. Considering the above, this session aims at providing a forum for the discussion of key aspects and challenges related to the development of SSbD criteria for chemicals. Hence, it welcomes contributions addressing methodological aspects related to e.g. RA, LCA methodologies and circular design that can support the development of the SSbD concept, including application examples from the sectors mentioned. Moreover, the development of methodologies for chemical RA that take into account the whole life cycle of substances, materials and products are welcomed, providing space for presenting methods that integrate life cycle and chemical risk assessment. Contributions on the implementation of the criteria or the application of existing frameworks to case studies, including recommendations for further developments are welcomed, as well as considerations on the integration of SSbD in EU initiatives such as the SPPI or the EU taxonomy sustainable finance.

Recent developments in international standardization related to life cycle assessment (LCA) include amendments of ISO 14040 and 14044, a working draft of a new standard for normalization and weighting, an outline for a new standard on social LCA, a draft standard on LCA of biobased plastics, and an ongoing revision of the ISO 14020 series on environmental labelling. Requirements for LCA and related assessments are also specified in the EU Renewable Energy Directive, the guides for Product and Organisational Environmental Footprints, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and a multitude of other guidelines and standards. These documents are to varying degrees difficult to interpret, understand, and apply. They are, in part, inconsistent with each other and with scientific findings. They sometimes also appear to be internally inconsistent. This session aims to present and discuss feedback from the scientific community on completed or draft documents for standardization and harmonization of LCA. We invite methodological findings and observations on how the methods in different standards and guidelines are inconsistent and relate to each other, well-founded arguments on what aspects of the methods that are important to harmonize, and discussions on the pros and cons of standardization and harmonization in the field of LCA. We also invite well-argued suggestions on how to fill data gaps in the LCA by using, e.g., worst case, best case, average scenarios, over which time scales, etc. The methodological findings and suggestions should be clearly presented, for example through case studies.

Metals have long been recognized as having environmental impacts across their full life cycle, and discharges of them into surface waters have been regulated for several decades in many countries. However, there is an increasing need to understand and evaluate potential impacts from many other aspects of their life cycle, and to incorporate the latest scientific and technical developments in doing so. There are numerous challenges faced when incorporating technical and scientific developments into regulatory practices, many of which are related to the need to simplify extremely complex issues into approaches that can be practically, and cost effectively, implemented by non-experts. For example, the technical background to our understanding of metal bioavailability has been well established for over twenty years, but only one bioavailability-based water quality standard has been in place for more than ten years (the US Water Quality Criteria for Copper). There are still only a relatively limited number of bioavailability-based water quality standards for other metals in use for routine environmental regulation. Although metals have been widely recycled for centuries there is increasing manufacturing demand for relatively scarce elements of the earth’s crust such as Rare Earth Elements, many of which have received only very limited regulatory attention in the past. Understanding the potential impacts of this increased demand on the environment, and taking appropriate steps to regulate and control it, require the integration of developments from many diverse areas of research. However, these scientific developments also often need to be adapted either to enable them to be applied in an integrated manner, for example in Life Cycle Assessment, and to enable them to form the basis of better and more effective regulatory practices. This session aims to showcase examples of scientific developments in our understanding of the fate and toxicity of metals being adopted into both Life Cycle Assessment and practical regulatory applications in any environmental media, and examples of their implementation in real environmental situations.

The founding principle of One Health if that the health of humans, animals and the environment are all intrinsically linked. The focus of One Health has been overwhelmingly dominated by a wave of infectious disease research with a goal of prevention of zoonotic diseases, particularly since the onset of the global COVID19 pandemic. Other critical components have been left in the wake of this wave such as non-communicable diseases including cancer and investigations into how exposure to environmental chemicals impact health of all systems. The moniker ‘One Environmental Health’ was coined as a sub-concept of One Health to create a space that focuses on the health impacts associated with exposure to environmental stressors. Toxicants are an inevitable component of our natural and built environment. This symposium aims to highlight the diversity in One Environmental Health approaches from bench to bedside, from animals to lawmakers, from field work to court rooms and how some of our most pressing metal and organic environmental health concerns are being considered in this important paradigm. This session will consider how the breadth of species (wildlife, pets, domestic animals, model species, humans, etc.) and real-world exposure scenarios can inform us about greater ecosystem and human health threats. Collectively, we seek to discuss the full spectrum of One Environmental Health, from concepts, to exposure monitoring, to mechanistic disease research, and finally to public policy; with an over-arching goal to create a healthier world for humans, animals and ecosystems. The session will discuss exposure monitoring using sentinel species, the integration of exposure monitoring with health outcomes, investigating mechanisms of disease using wildlife and laboratory-based animal models. Altogether, the session will demonstrate how One Environmental Health is used to draw attention to the collaborative efforts in toxicology and how its fits within the One Health paradigm.

The “6th mass extinction”, also referred to as the ”Anthropocene extinction” has been claimed for 2 decades by researchers on the basis of high numbers of endangered species and habitats under threat: 25 per cent of species threatened with extinction, 85 per cent of wetlands has been lost, as well as decline in wildlife numbers and biomass in general. In 2015, Steffen et al. alerted about the exceedance of natural boundaries for several component among which the genetic diversity and the biochemical flows (Phosphorus, Nitrogen). Biodiversity is not only characterized by abundance of species and genetic diversity, but also by the ecosystem’s functional diversity and provision of services to sustain life and societies. However, the measurement of those criteria, and more specifically the functional diversity is very difficult and even more complex when they need to be transposed into standards in order to be able to determine the levers of action. Despite the complexity of the topic, investors and financial sector have started to measure the dependencies of industrial activities and their impact to guide them in their decisions, e.g. via the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy where companies are assessed relative to do-no-harm criteria. Sectorial approaches have been developed for example for agriculture and mining activities. However, the dependencies and the impact of chemical industry is still to be explored. There is already a good source of information with the ecotoxicological tests conducted on chemical substances; Nevertheless, the possible consequences on ecosystems and species abundance are difficult to predict from ecotoxicological tests even if several models have been developed for example to address impact in trophic webs. We know that habitat loss drives losses – but what is the role and contribution of ecotoxic chemicals? Therefore, the main objectives of this session are to present research results on: – Projects and methods used to predict biodiversity and biomass loss from single species tests or multi-compartment tests (microcosms, mesocosms…) – Development of indicators for the measurement of functional effects, consider some local specificities and solutions to protect the services we rely on, – Methods to integrate Biodiversity into strategic decisions and regulations and how to report the dependencies and the impact of chemical sectors to respond to Targets 14 and 15 of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will be adopted at the COP 15 in April 2022. – The development of “nature-positive solutions” in Chemical Industry as required by the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework from 2030 – The gaps and the research needs within the Chemical Industry to implement the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework – Open the debate between Research and Financial world This session is intended to be organized with an open and exploratory mind, displaying novel and disruptive approaches that could support a transformative chemical industry. This session will finally welcome presentations on the integration of research results into the financial institutions and corporates as intended in the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

The Guidance Document (GD) on the risk assessment for birds and mammals for plant protection products (EFSA 2009)1 was the first guidance developed by EFSA in ecotoxicology and a recent EFSA document has indicated the need for developing a new risk assessment scheme specific for bats (EFSA 2019)2. After extensive use by risk assessors in the EU (authorities and industry) during the last 12 years, the 2009 GD is now in the process of being officially updated by EFSA, with tentative deadlines for completion in 2022. Although successfully applied and agreed in several areas, the GD contains topics which remain controversial and/or lack harmonization in interpretation among regulators. Significant efforts have been carried out in the last 3-4 years to address some of these points, both by regulators (EFSA project for data compilation; regulators’ workshops) and industry (publications and data compilation). Some of these topics were addressed in well-attended sessions that took place at SETAC EU 2019 (‘Revision of the EFSA Guidance Document on Birds and Mammals’) and SETAC EU 2020 (‘Refinement of the risk to birds and mammals from plant protection products: Higher tier studies and approaches’). These efforts continue and mainly focus on the compilation and interpretation of data to improve the exposure (species at risk in European crops, PT, PD, residues in food items, other than the diet exposure routes) and direct toxic effect (interpretation of toxicity endpoints in the laboratory, field effects studies and modelling) components of the risk assessment or the risk assessment itself (seed treatments) and decision making (addressing remaining uncertainties; weight of evidence). The SETAC-Europe meeting provides an ideal and timely forum for sharing and summarizing the new information. The main objectives of this session are (1) to present and discuss the (draft) updated EFSA GD for birds and mammals, (2) to give the opportunity to regulators, academia, industry and contract laboratories to share results from recent studies, data compilations and developments targeted at those topics which have proven more difficult during the implementation of the current GD and (3) to facilitate open discussions among key stakeholders on future research needs to improve prospective ERA for birds and mammals and plant protection products, particularly to address all relevant exposure routes (not only dietary), direct and indirect effects, possible cumulative effects of the use of different plant protection products and the need for a landscape-level risk assessment procedure. The chairs have all sound experience with the use and/or update of this GD and are representative of different stakeholders (industry, M Foudoulakis; academia, T Brock (academia), regulators, E McVey; consultants, A Brooks). 1 EFSA (2009). EFSA Journal 2009; 7(12):1438. [139 pp.]. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2009.1438 2 EFSA Journal 2019;17(7):5758, 81 pp. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2019.5758

To comply with REACH and demonstrate safe use of their products, companies must now provide specific information on nanoforms (NFs) manufactured or imported into the EU, in addition to information on the non-NF registered chemical substance. However, acceptable methods are often still missing, and novel NFs often pose new methodical challenges. Transfer of research knowledge into operational standards (e.g. OECD, ISO etc.) fulfilling the REACH requirements has been slow, and better bi-directional linking of future regulatory needs to research agendas is required to speed up the process. It is of utmost importance that regulatory needs, and upcoming future regulations, are better communicated to the science community to enable development and validation of the necessary methods and datasets. The revised REACH annexes request additional information including phys-chem characterisation, environmental hazard and exposure assessment of NFs and sets of similar NFs, but scientific challenges on testing and assessing risks of NFs remain. Academic science often targets fundamental research questions rather than developing more generalised and simplified models applicable in regulation, resulting in experimental data which cannot be used in a regulatory context. Additionally, research on the fate and hazard of NFs is an evolving science, so work towards standardisation of testing guidelines (TGs) and assessment is pending. Efforts to overcome these challenges will aid in creating robust NF safety assessment frameworks for REACH and other regulations. Good progress in developing NM specific OECD standardised TGs and Guidance Documents (GDs) applicable in a regulatory context is being made, but substantial further work is needed to develop a full set of suitable ERA methodologies. Recent EC-funded research has increasingly focused on development of hazard and risk assessment frameworks for NFs i.e. new (or adaptation of existing) methodologies to reliably test NFs, installation of modelling platforms, databases and use of alternative test strategies. However, the challenge remains transferring this knowledge into systems which are acceptable by regulatory bodies. For that, it is imperative to communicate research challenges and findings, and transfer the knowledge between research/industry and regulators/policy makers. Presentations or case studies using data generated using the new (2017-2021) OECD TGs and GDs and/or scientifically justified methodology from the ongoing research projects (including alternative testing strategies e.g. read-across, in silico/in vitro methods, justification of “sets”) is invited in order to propose solutions and fuel discussions around regulatory ERA of NFs. This session aims to provide a transparent communication platform bringing scientists, regulators, and industry together to discuss recent scientific developments in experimental and in silico characterisation and environmental hazard and exposure assessment of NMs.

Flame retardants are a diverse group of chemicals, based on compounds of the elements bromine, chlorine, phosphorus, nitrogen, aluminium and magnesium (to name the commercially most relevant). This chemical diversity is related to the fact that the effect of slowing or preventing the ignition of materials can be achieved by different mechanisms. Whereas certain halogenated (Br, Cl) flame retardants have been extensively studied, from findings in environmental compartments to toxic and eco-toxic effects and resulting regulatory restrictions, industry has also developed a large portfolio of non-halogenated flame retardants. Some of these like the organo-phosphates have also drawn scientific and regulatory attention. The challenges for flame retardants under the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability are manifold: • What defines a flame retardant that is safe and sustainable by design? • Which are suitable assessment schemes for flame retardant hazard profiles? • How can we create more transparency along supply chains and for consumers on flame retardants in products? • How can flame retarded polymers be properly recycled?

Reconciling food and fiber production with biodiversity is at the heart of the discussions to design the European policies of the future such as the Green Deal, Farm to Fork, and the Biodiversity strategy. Such a turn at European and also global level is driven by various environmental and societal indicators, calling for an optimization of food production systems towards high quality delivery while minimizing footprint, and is made possible because food security is achieved in most parts of the world. A series of workshops organized under the auspices of SETAC Europe gathered all interested stakeholders on the question of reconciling agriculture production and biodiversity in European farmland. The list of priority actions proposed by the workshop participants included 1) the need to rapidly promote and implement existing “low hanging fruits” approaches that proved to be effective at improving biodiversity in the farmland; 2) more reflections on the way to measure the effectiveness of farming systems using these approaches towards biodiversity gain through harmonized monitoring methods and data collection; 3) education on the approaches, their effectiveness and biodiversity in general across the chain of stakeholders, including the development of communication and education tools. This session call for contribution on these 3 priorities identified during the workshop. In particular, examples of implementation of approaches that effectively improved biodiversity in cultivated land and detailing the involvement of stakeholders in developing the farming system to reach that goal are welcome. Contributions on monitoring methods that covered metrics relative to biodiversity as well as risk reduction methods lowering the impact of pesticides, production metrics (e.g. yields and quality criteria) and other Ecosystem Services are also in scope. Input describing levels of biodiversity that may be met and/or expected in cultivated systems together with details on the method developed to measure / predict them will also be in scope. Lastly, contributions on stakeholder engagement and communication through education and communication tools will be included in this session. More details on the session topic may be discussed with the chairs so do not hesitate to contact us!

The use of chemicals can cause damages to human health and the environment. The aim of regulatory or voluntary control measures is to ensure that negative impacts are minimised. Replacing harmful substances by less harmful alternatives is a straightforward strategy and a key goal of the new European Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (EU-CSS). Replacement is particularly needed for substances of very high concern (SVHC), such as chemicals with PBT/vPvB ((very) persistent, (very) bioaccumulative and toxic) or CMR (carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction) properties, endocrine disruptors (ED) or persistent, mobile and toxic (PMT) substances, that can damage human health and the environment even at low exposure levels. Similarly, a focus should lie on substances with wide dispersive use in consumer goods with the aim to use the substances with the lowest impacts. Since the concern of chemicals consists of multiple components and safe alternatives may not always be readily available, pragmatic science-based approaches for identifying least harmful substitutes are required in order to guide beneficial substitution. This session invites presentations addressing this challenge, considering the different perspectives involved. These include, but are not limited to, comparative exposure and impact assessment of chemical substances, approaches to identifying safe(r) alternative substances, assessments of the consequences of beneficial and regrettable substitution, alternatives assessment in REACH authorisation and restriction procedures, approaches for the treatment of uncertainties and knowledge gaps related to alternatives assessment, the challenges and opportunities of the essential use concept for beneficial substitution, aspects of life cycle assessments for assessing beneficial substitutions, the role of substitution of substances in a circular economy. This session provides a platform to scientists, regulators and stakeholders to discuss and compare existing concepts, tools and approaches to alternatives impacts assessment and beneficial substitution under different regulatory frameworks from environmental as well as economic perspectives. Presentations on methodological issues related to, e.g. the assessment and valuation of impacts or the treatment of uncertainties, are equally welcome. Beneficial substitutions can be discussed for various groups of chemicals, e.g. belonging to the same chemical class, having common physico-chemical properties, showing similar effects, or being used in similar application fields.

Historically, the assessment of chemical safety (human and environmental) has been based on batteries of in vivo studies using only a few species selected as representative of all taxonomic groups, boosted by in silico and/or in vitro approaches and the knowledge of exposure levels. Recently, the regulatory landscape has begun to change, driven in part by ethical considerations to reduce/ replace the reliance on data generated in animals. As such there is a growing interest in the use of non-animal approaches supporting New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) to guide regulatory decision-making. In this session we would like to discuss examples bridging the gap between NAMs, specifically NAM-based discovery of molecular mechanisms of chemical action, and adverse outcomes of ecological or regulatory relevance in an AOP perspective. These examples are fundamental to increase the societal value of science used it to underpin the protection of human and environmental health. Due of the breadth of the topic, we would welcome a variety of different examples, including development of AOPs based on NAMs, characterizing normal variation of molecular profiles in organisms to better identify relevant read-outs which could be used for Points of Departure analysis supporting safety decisions,and tackling the questions around the distinction between adaptation and adversity. Finally, we would like to hear from end users (industry and /or regulators) regarding their needs and requirements which should set the scene allowing new developments and applications within this field of science, in a similar way to those which are used currently in human health approaches

There are many regulations worldwide to address chemical safety, both for humans and the environment and considerable progress on chemical safety has been made in the past decades. However, chemical pollution still remains a concern. Environmental organisms (and humans) are exposed to a multitude of natural and anthropogenic substances and also to non-chemical stress, posing the question which levels and combinations of stressors potentially lead to unwanted effects and how these can be mitigated. More recently, research on mixture toxicity has made substantial progress and delivered a better understanding of how substances act together on all levels of biological organisation from molecules and cells through communities and ecosystems. This improved understanding has also found its way into chemicals’ regulation and for some chemical uses an explicit mixture (or cumulative) assessment is required. For example in the EU, the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS)., published 2020, explicitly asks to address „the combination effect of chemicals (cocktail effect) by taking better account of the risk that is posed to human health and the environment by daily exposure to a wide mix of chemicals from different sources“. This session invites contributions on how science can inform regulation on intentional und unintentional mixtures, including prospective and retrospective risk assessment and remediation. Also welcome are contributions on what ecotoxicological drivers are; critical assessments which current regulatory approaches work, which have shortcomings and how to improve the existing approaches; what their economic and societal impact is and how to best communicate them to scientists, regulators and the general public.

As part of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, the European Commission has initiated discussions with Member States and stakeholders on extending the REACH Regulation to polymers. The number of polymers on the EU market is large (estimates range from < 70,000 to 400,000 polymers). To reduce the registration burden on industry and minimise animal testing, while still ensuring safe use, (i) polymers of low concern (PLC) will be exempted from registration and (ii) ‘same’ polymers requiring registration (PRR) are to be grouped together into a single ‘PRR substance’. A registration dossier will include the PRR substance’s identity, physico-chemical properties and exposure and hazard information (health and environment), analogous to ‘regular’ non-polymer substances. The available information on polymers is likely to be limited or patchy, hence registration of polymers is likely to trigger substantial new test data generation in the coming decade. Current technical discussions focus on key issues such as (a) the standard information requirements at different registration tonnages for polymers of different ‘types’ and whether additional information requirements should be introduced to characterize polymers (such as water extractability), (b) the utility and applicability of existing test methods to polymers, (c) grouping and test material selection to cover the range of compositions within the PRR substance and (d) unique aspects of hazard and risk assessment for polymers, such as the extractable components from polymers that reach the environment A crucial point of principle to discuss is whether polymers in general are per se of lower (or different) hazard potential than non-polymer substances, as this will inform the degree of acceptable uncertainty in the above aspects and options for testing adaptation specific to polymers. This session invites contributions that may aid the technical and/or regulatory discussions. Papers on secondary micro- and nano-plastics are assumed to be covered elsewhere, unless directly relevant to polymer registration discussions in the EU context.

Plastic pollution has become one of the major environmental concerns over the past decade, resulting in substantial focus from regulators, the public, and the scientific communities. There is a consensus that plastic pollution is of concern and should be addressed. The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) recently published a restriction proposal under EU chemical regulation, REACH, on intentionally added microplastics, concluding that these plastic particles do pose a risk and should be regulated. However, there is an intense ongoing debate about the magnitude of the problems related to plastic pollution, not at least to what extent microplastic pose a significant environmental risk. Apart from ECHAs restriction proposal there has also been adopted several different legislations world-wide to reduce plastic pollution. These regulations draw upon numerous management measures such as bans, fees and levies. The rapid implementation of these legislative measures results in uncertainties with respect to the actual implementation and there is a need for scientific founded recommendations to support their implementation and enforcement. Plastic pollution is furthermore one of the environmental topics that has gained massive interest from the public and images of dying animals entangled in plastic litter have created strong public involvement towards reducing plastic pollution. This engagement has initiated a debate about risk communication and whether plastic pollution is drawing attention from other important topics such as climate change, chemical pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Very few studies have examined what impact risk communication of plastic pollution has on the public opinion on other environmental problems, and this is another key area where science must inform societal actions. The aim of this session is therefore to highlight the recent advancements in regulation, risk assessment, risk management and risk communication of plastic pollution. To this end we invite contributions covering all aspects of plastic pollution from, nanoplastic to macroplastic, covering studies that address hazard and exposure to plastic pollution explicitly related to regulation and risk assessment. We would also welcome studies that analyze implementation and impact of risk management and communication between stakeholders e.g. political decision makers, regulatory authorities, the scientific community and the public.

Marine systems play a crucial role in the well-being of humans around the globe. Our oceans are vital to food and energy production and provide a wide range of ecosystem services. While efforts to protect marine ecosystems are ongoing, pressures are also growing because of higher demands in energy and food production, transport, extraction of resources and related processes of industrialization. In 2017, the United Nations proclaimed a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, to be held from 2021 to 2030 (oceandecade.org). SETAC can play an important role in defining sustainable use of marine ecosystems i.e., without the effects of resource depletion and environmental deterioration. For decades we have studied chemical contamination of the marine environment and chemical characteristics have evolved according to the development of production processes, clean-up technologies and protective measures. Nowadays, the main challenges are related to the combined impacts of marine pollution, with special focus on chemical mixtures, and climate change (e.g., effects of floods/droughts and ocean acidification on the geographic distribution of contaminants both local and global scales). In addition, intensified uses of the marine systems require understanding of the effects of marine constructions for large-scale activities e.g., to produce renewable energy and the blue economy. To achieve sustainable development, good science is needed to inform policies, increase the knowledge of all stakeholders, and ultimately deliver solutions to address the ‘Ocean Decade’ challenges: ‘Understanding and beating marine pollution’, ‘Protecting and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity’ and ‘Developing a sustainable and equitable ocean economy’. The objective of this session is present novel studies that contribute to the shaping of a sustainable relationship between humans and marine ecosystems. The session will explore new and existing assessment methodologies using integrated modelling and monitoring frameworks, highlight examples of laboratory and field studies on marine contaminants and their biological effects, and focus on analyses of multi-stressor impacts in the marine environment related to the issues listed above. We strongly encourage the presentation of inter- and multidisciplinary approaches and linking of the results to the societal framework including regulation of chemical contamination and management of the marine environment.

Critical Raw Materials (CRM) for future technologies, also called Technology Critical Elements (TCE), such as Rare Earth Elements and other metals that are considered strategically important in particular to clean technologies are of growing importance in the functioning of our economy. Human use leads to TCEs’ emission to the environment, and anthropogenic enrichments are already detectable in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Overshadowed by economic and geopolitical considerations, their environmental risk and impacts and their recycling potential have received little attention because it is perceived as low compared to other more common trace elements and bulk metals. However, e.g. biogeochemical cycles are affected by TCEs, and chronic effects on essential trophic levels may have severe environmental impacts. Information needs to be compiled from various disciplines in order to provide enough knowledge for a more certain assessment of both the environmental risk and life cycle impacts from the production and consumption of CRM. This session aims at initiating a bridge between TCEs (geo)chemistry and (eco)toxicology scientists on the one hand and life cycle assessment (LCA) and recycling experts on the other hand. We invite original papers on this new integrated field of research covering topics such as LCA as well as experimental data and analysis, information on TCEs’ dynamics and recycling potential, environmental concentrations and behaviour, fate, effects etc.

Human beings and environmental organisms are exposed to tens of thousands of chemicals daily with unknown toxic effects. Traditional targeted chemical monitoring strategy cannot meet the demand of the increasing concern of human for complex and dynamic chemical exposure. The concept of exposome was proposed to characterize the entire exposome of individuals throughout the life span , representing a shift of research paradigm from targeted monitoring to unbiased exposome profiling. The concept has been expanded to a broader range of organisms, the ecoexposome. Although the (eco)exposome concept has received considerable attention over the last decade, the analytical workflows for assessing the chemical exposome in a non-targeted and comprehensive manner are still underdeveloped, and the studies evaluating the health risk and environmental risks associated with the entire chemical exposome are still limited. In this session, we aim to cover the current progress of the following topics related to the (eco)exposome concept: (1) analytical progress of novel targeted and non-targeted mass spectrometry-based approaches, omics techniques and of mixture evaluation tools such as in vitro bioassays for measuring the chemical exposome; (2) informatics progress of efforts associated with the autonomous and high-throughput analysis of chemical exposome, solutions to the big data challenge, in silico chemical MS/MS library, etc.; (3) progress related with the method development in unknown chemical identification and its application; (4) novel environmental and health risk evaluation studies related with the chemical exposome exposure.

Sustainability assessment is a daunting task, multifaceted and complex by nature. When dealing with chemicals, different concepts were proposed or adopted in the policy domain to stress the need of reducing impacts on human health and ecosystems. To assess whether policy initiatives succeed in delivering on the aims calls for methods to assess not just the magnitude of impacts on ecosystem health, but also if the impacts are excessive and threaten the resilience of the ecosystems. However, a planetary boundary for chemical pollution has still to be determined – in particular because ‘thresholds leading to unacceptable impacts on human health and ecosystem functioning’ are largely unknown. Notwithstanding these difficulties, concepts such as the ‘do no harm’ principle, the ‘safe and sustainable by design’ concept, have been adopted within Green Deal related initiatives and beyond (e.g. in the Chemical strategy for Sustainability towards a toxic free environment, the Zero pollution action plan, and in the Sustainable financial taxonomy) and enshrined a boundary/threshold concept, namely they refer all to certain limits not to be surpassed. The key issue is related on how to assess whether a chemical (or a mixture of them) is overcoming certain thresholds defined by safety or other principles. Clearly, to operationalize the sustainability assessment of chemicals requires specific methods and indicators. The integrated assessment of chemical pollution that is needed for defining such thresholds is multifaceted and complex, relying on the transdisciplinary collaboration of a diverse set of disciplines, encompassing amongst others human toxicology, ecotoxicology, ecology, environmental modeling, environmental fate, chemical or effect monitoring, and systems analyses. Challenges include especially the identification of robust indicators of chemical impact and the determination of acceptable boundaries in relation to ecosystem properties and services, including possible interplay between them. Emerging research is exploring the integration of planetary and other science-based boundaries to enable assessments of sustainability on an absolute scale. This session aims at discussing similarities and differences in concepts and methods to assess the various dimensions of safety and sustainability of chemicals, exploring the role of life cycle assessment, risk assessment, integrated assessment and beyond to operationalize the assessment. Moreover, studies dealing with approaches to set boundaries, considering regional and temporal dimensions, as well as chemical types, are welcome.

Reducing societal impacts of pollution requires advancing sustainable chemicals management approaches at the global scale. Uncertainty inherently hampers chemical assessments, which routinely include application of default application factors to be protective of biological, methodological and environmental uncertainties. Though new approach methodologies (NAMs) and big data efforts present unprecedented opportunities to stimulation innovation, reduce uncertainty and improve chemicals management, understanding and accounting for uncertainties associated with NAMs within the context of contemporary chemical assessment processes remains challenging. Integration of these approaches within existing risk assessment frameworks thus requires collaboration among disciplines as community science and data sharing platforms continue to increase. The objective of this session is to stimulate communication across disciplines and stakeholders to advance next generation tools and data sharing approaches. We aim to facilitate communication among disciplines contributing to the “SETAC sciences” of particular importance to chemicals development, assessment and management. We are particularly interested in contributions related to NAMs, including nonstandard data analysis, data mining and machine learning, and studies illustrating challenges, opportunities and successes associated with data sharing, curation and quality metrics among NAMs, scales of biological organization, and stakeholders for the industrial and specialty chemical spaces.

It is not always easy and straightforward to obtain the most reliable experimental data. Often experimental setups require the use of appropriate positive and negative controls, special materials and/or instruments and different types of quality standards (e.g., blanks). This is the case for chemical trace analysis (both target analysis but particularly for non-target screenings of environmental samples), but also for transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, gene sequencing, assays using absorbance, luminescence or fluorescence measurements etc. Even simple and well-established in vitro and in vivo bioassays need adequate negative control samples, where the organism ideally is not chemically stressed, and positive controls in the form of chemicals whose effect we know, verifying that our biological test behaves as expected. Due to more and more joint studies of several labs where data are evaluated together, such quality control is getting even more important. Although it sounds logical and simple, in reality these controls can be difficult to select and yield surprising results. Known or unknown problems such as release of chemicals from sample containers, filters and other equipment can contaminate; degradation, crystallization during freezing and isomerization can change the effect of the positive controls, and a wealth of other things can happen in our procedures compromising blank samples and positive or negative controls. Ultimately, this can contribute to unreliable and non-reproducible data across research teams. When solved or identified, it is vital that these methodological challenges are communicated, however, they do not always make it to publications or are seen as of secondary importance. If unresolved, methodological challenges may compromise the reliability of your data, which makes scientists even more hesitant to publish and discuss strange and unexpected observations in their lab. We therefore propose a session where researchers can present and openly discuss some of the methodological challenges they face in their own research field when striving at obtaining good quality control of their method used in experimental environmental science.

The increasing world population highly increase the freshwater demand being the agriculture irrigation the major use. The available freshwater is limited, and due to excessive groundwater withdrawal in coastal areas, seawater intrusion in aquifers are reported with the associated risk for human health and ecosystems. Looking for alternative water sources like reclaimed water (effluent from wastewater treatment plants, WWTPs) or desalinated water is needed. However, these approaches might speed up water salinisation. Examples are the problems associated with brine management or the secondary salinisation derived from human water use that is not removed in WWTPs. Moreover, it is needed to optimise the WWTPs to treat/valorise industrial saline wastewater or WWTPs with seawater intrusion problems that lead to the treated water (and consequently the produced reclaimed water) having a relatively high salt content. Irrigation with saline (reclaimed) water will contribute to soil salinisation and harm soil ecosystems, crops, or water bodies. Soil salinisation is extensively addressed in Europe, standing out the specialised working group of soil salinisation by the EIP-AGRI from European Commission. Meanwhile, water salinisation remains still mainly unexplored and is not addressed in the water regulations. Hence, water salinisation is a global problem that needs to be holistically addressed, from prevention to mitigation. This session focuses on the challenges that promote the identification, assessment, and control of water salinisation and its impacts on the environment and society. We invite presentations that highlight salinisation problems, the most common practices and their effectiveness in mitigating them, and the assessment of salinisation effects on ecosystems and horticulture practices. It is also opened to contribution in the broadest concept to address this environmental risk from a technical, environmental, social and legal point of view, increasing the salinisation problem awareness among the general public and especially the administrations. This may include, but is not limited to: -Identifying freshwater salinised areas and their main causes, establishing possible prevention, early identification and/or mitigation measures -Identifying those technologies based on physical-chemical and/or biological processes applicable to minimising or treating/valorising saline (waste) water -Defining the salt limits for water reuse in irrigation, the salt tolerance of growing plants and developing strategies to minimise soil salinisation risks -Reviewing the effectiveness of regulations and procedures used to assess risk and control water salinisation -Incorporating salt as a parameter in modelling and LCA studies -Assessing the population-relevant ecotoxicological effects inferred by substances present within wastewater effluents -Assessing the social perception and the irrigators community acceptance

The current plant protection product (PPP) label as presented to a farmer, whether on the package or accessible on-line, is becoming increasingly complicated and complex. Adding together the diversity of mitigation measures, conditions of use required across tank mixes to guarantee safe use as well as increasing options for use in Integrated Pest Management programs means that the effort to avoid label misinterpretation as well as errors in application increases. Automation and the opportunities that digitalisation and precision farming bring to the farmer can facilitate label comprehension, save time, and ensure safe and compliant use even with complex labels. Additionally, risk assessments for PPP application are made on a country-wide basis using national scenarios whereas the product is used at the scale of an individual field. This means that the current percentile approach to risk assessment is not tailored to the individual field scenario and could potentially leave sections of a country’s fields under-protected. With the era of digital technologies, implementing machine-readable and machine-actionable label at the level of the field considering its actual conditions and surroundings will mean that every field and adjacent sensitive areas can be optimally protected with tailored measures. This session therefore invites contributions describing the possibilities – advantages as well as drawbacks – to implementing digital PPP labels at the field scale, and even in situ (i.e., in real time). Abstracts may cover all aspects of PPP use and risk assessment where these affect the label, including digital tools for agriculture in general and innovative application methods to reflect how it will contribute to risk reduction targets, as well as more localised application requirements that the grower must follow but are not part of the traditional label. Example subject areas are: • Advances in digitalisation that will affect the application of PPPs and their label requirements. • Regulatory requirements for a machine-readable, machine-actionable label. • Challenges relating to the data required to support a digital label. • Challenges or advances relating interconnection of precision farming and data or databases informing applications. • Regulatory, national, research, or industry initiatives already underway in this area. • Digital tools for agriculture in general and innovative application methods to reflect how it will contribute to risk reduction targets.