19 December 2012: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as part of its contribution to the Inter-Organisation Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC), has issued a summary of the existing models and tools used for exposure assessment of chemicals. The document was produced under the leadership of the Netherlands by the OECD Task Force on Exposure Assessment.

The document summarizes 56 models and tools for various stages of exposure assessment of chemicals, from priority setting to detailed assessment, for both environmental and human health exposure assessment. They are broken down into 22 categories, with the most common being multimedia models (11 entries) and three types of combined multimedia models: multimedia + bioaccumulation, multimedia + food, and multimedia + residential exposure. The document’s summary table, along with the responses to the OECD survey on which it is based, have been added to the OECD’s online Environmental Risk Assessment Toolkit.

IOMC was established in 1995 to strengthen cooperation and increase coordination among its nine participating international organizations in policies and activities to achieve the sound management of chemicals in relation to human health and the environment. [Publication: Descriptions of Existing Models and Tools Used for Exposure Assessment] [Publication: OECD Environmental Risk Assessment Toolkit]