In a paper published this month, the EPA outlined its strategic plans to implement a new approach to chemical toxicity testing. Current approaches rely almost exclusively on animal testing. The new model for toxicity testing and risk assessment is focused on toxicity pathways. Information on the pathways will be combined with distributional data on population characteristics of exposure and dose. The EPA’s strategic goals for this approach are: toxicity pathway identification and assay development; chemical prioritization; creation of toxicity pathway knowledgebases; the use of virtual tissues, organs and systems to link exposure, dosimetry and response; human evaluations and quantitative risk assessment; operational transition; organizational transition; and outreach.

Source: EPA