- Extending and consolidating a quality assurance and quality control framework for global use by end-users across various applications in environmental, food, and human biomonitoring fields.
- Achieving more consistent and comparable data from suspect and non-target screening methods across multiple laboratories.
- Gaining more insight in comparability of the results across studies by working towards a more quantitatively interpretable output.
Key messages
- Novel suspect and non-screening methods are crucial to detect a wide range of chemicals that may not be well understood or prioritised. Quality assurance and quality control for these methods is not yet well established. In this project, a harmonised quality assurance and quality control framework will be developed and implemented.
Overview
Chemicals are present everywhere in the environment. To understand the risks they pose to human health and the environment, it is essential to have reliable data about their presence in the environment, food and the human body. Well-established procedures and internationally agreed guidelines exist to validate methods for targeted analysis, which involves testing or specific substances, such as lead.
These guidelines include steps for quality control, often using control samples that contain the target substance. This helps to produce high-quality data that is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), providing risk assessors with trustworthy data.
However, there are no universally accepted guidelines for suspect and non-targeted screening ↗, which involves scanning samples for a wide range of unknown chemicals without a specific one in mind. This approach is crucial in research projects like the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) to identify chemicals that may not yet be well understood or prioritised. Suspect and non-targeted screening ↗ methods, which use chemical or biological techniques, are still relatively new, and necessary quality control and quality assurance processes are not yet well established and harmonised.
This project aims to establish the essential quality standards needed specifically for suspect and non-targeted screening ↗ methods. These methods rely on advanced techniques such as chromatography, which separates complex chemical mixtures, and high-resolution mass spectrometry, a process that identifies substances by measuring their molecular weight, as well as biological assays that reveal the effects of chemicals on living systems. The project will catalogue current quality control and quality assessment guidelines across food, environmental and human biomonitoring domains, identify any inconsistencies or gaps, and work to align these standards across the application fields to ensure robust, consistent procedures for identifying unknown chemicals.
Achievements & Results
An inventory document summarizing existing quality assurance and quality control used in environmental, human biomonitoring and food screening methods was drafted.
Policy relevance
Improving the quality and comparability of the results obtained by screening and non-target methods makes the results more reliable and usable for risk assessment.
Related Publications
Less conventional sampling, non-targeted mass spectrometry acquisition and effect-directed analysis show promise to advance chemical exposure characterisation but numerous scientific barriers limit their incorporation into regulatory frameworks.
Continuous development of diverse and complementary analytical and computational methodologies is required to improve the detection, annotation, quantification and prioritisation of chemicals and/or chemical features presenting current, emerging or future concern.
Uniform reporting practices need to be established and enforced to ensure transparency, reproducibility and comparability of generated results. Mandatory data sharing and metadata reporting, protocol sharing, and quality management procedures should be stipulated. Reuirements include establishing fit-for-purpose identification scales, method performance criteria and software quality standards alongside mechanisms to assess compliance.
A network of harmonised laboratories operating standardised innovative methods for chemical exposure characterization should be established for use as a tool within a European early warning system for chemical risks.
Initial steps have outlined core barriers that will be attempted to be overcome to advance the implementation of less-conventional sampling strategies and integration of full-scan, high-resolution mass spectrometry and effect-directed analysis into environmental and human monitoring programs for chemical risk assessment.
The chemical burden on the environment and human population is increasing. Consequently, regulatory risk assessment must keep pace to manage, reduce, and prevent adverse impacts on human and environmental health associated with hazardous chemicals. Surveillance of chemicals of known, emerging, or potential future concern, entering the environment-food-human continuum is needed to document the reality of risks posed by chemicals on ecosystem and human health from a one health perspective, feed into early warning systems and support public policies for exposure mitigation provisions and safe and sustainable by design strategies. The use of less-conventional sampling strategies and integration of full-scan, high-resolution mass spectrometry and effect-directed analysis in environmental and human monitoring programmes have the potential to enhance the screening and identification of a wider range of chemicals of known, emerging or potential future concern. Here, we outline the key needs and recommendations identified within the European Partnership for Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) project for leveraging these innovative methodologies to support the development of next-generation chemical risk assessment.