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Opinion polls show that the European Union citizens are increasingly concerned about the impact of environmental factors on their health. In order to respond and provide solid scientific evidence for the numerous policies related to the protection of human health and the environment managed at the Union level, the European Union made a substantial investment in research and innovation in the past two decades through its Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, including the current programme, Horizon 2020, which started in 2014. This policy review paper analysed the portfolio of forty collaborative projects relevant to environment and health, which received a total amount of around 228 million euros from the EU. It gives details on their contents and general scientific trends observed, the profiles of the participating countries and institutions, and the potential policy implications of the results obtained. The increasing knowledge base is needed to make informed policy decisions in Europe and beyond, and should be useful to many stakeholders including the scientific community and regulatory authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Humans and wildlife are exposed to an intractably large number of different combinations of chemicals via food, water, air, consumer products, and other media and sources. This raises concerns about their impact on public and environmental health. The risk assessment of chemicals for regulatory purposes mainly relies on the assessment of individual chemicals. If exposure to multiple chemicals is considered in a legislative framework, it is usually limited to chemicals falling within this framework and co-exposure to chemicals that are covered by a different regulatory framework is often neglected. Methodologies and guidance for assessing risks from combined exposure to multiple chemicals have been developed for different regulatory sectors, however, a harmonised, consistent approach for performing mixture risk assessments and management across different regulatory sectors is lacking. At the time of this publication, several EU research projects are running, funded by the current European Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 or the Seventh Framework Programme. They aim at addressing knowledge gaps and developing methodologies to better assess chemical mixtures, by generating and making available internal and external exposure data, developing models for exposure assessment, developing tools for in silico and in vitro effect assessment to be applied in a tiered framework and for grouping of chemicals, as well as developing joint epidemiological-toxicological approaches for mixture risk assessment and for prioritising mixtures of concern. The projects EDC-MixRisk, EuroMix, EUToxRisk, HBM4EU and SOLUTIONS have started an exchange between the consortia, European Commission Services and EU Agencies, in order to identify where new methodologies have become available and where remaining gaps need to be further addressed. This paper maps how the different projects contribute to the data needs and assessment methodologies and identifies remaining challenges to be further addressed for the assessment of chemical mixtures. Highlights • Mapping EU funded research projects to different aspects of mixture risk assessment. • Overview of current status and methodological developments • Need to further address data and knowledge gaps overarching different chemical sectors [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]