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An evaluation was performed on the first group (41) of completed risk assessments for chemicals of the EU priority lists (Existing Chemicals; EC Regulation 793/93). The evaluation focussed on the conclusions of the risk assessments. The EU risk assessment process detected a high number of substances of concern. Furthermore priority chemicals may pose potential risks to the whole range of protection goals of the risk assessment. The predictability of the risk assessments for priority chemicals was investigated. Our a priori knowledge on possible risks of priority chemicals is found to be poor, especially for consumers. Both for environment and human health the potential risks were linked with a broad spectrum of use patterns. It is concluded that no industry category can in advance be excluded from performing risk assessments. For a great number of chemicals, additional testing was found to be needed to finalize the risk assessment. This evokes questions about the completeness of the current base-set, but also about the suitability of some of the submitted human health tests that should initially fulfil the base-set needs. The results of this evaluation are useful for ongoing discussions on risk assessment processes for chemicals.

In risk assessment of new and existing substances, it is current practice to characterise risk using a deterministic quotient of the exposure concentration, or the dose, and a no-effect level. A sense of uncertainty is tackled by introducing worst-case assumptions in the methodology. Since this procedure leads to an assessment with an unknown degree of conservatism, it is advisable to deal quantitatively with uncertainties. This paper discusses the advantages and possibilities of a probabilistic risk assessment framework, illustrated with an example calculation. Furthermore, representatives of EU Member States and the chemical industry were interviewed to find out their views on applying uncertainty analysis to risk assessment of industrial chemicals.

In the European Union, Directive 92/32/EC and EC Council Regulation (EC) 793/93 require the risk assessment of new and existing substances, respectively. Principles for this risk assessment have been laid down, supported by a detailed package of Technical Guidance Documents. Against this background the European Union System for the Evaluation of Substances (EUSES) has been developed. This software can be used to carry out tiered risk assessments of increasing complexity on the basis of increasing data requirements. The exposure assessment, effects assessment and risk characterisation are carried out for environmental populations as well as for human beings, including workers, consumers and man exposed through the environment. EUSES is the result of a co-ordinated effort of EU Member States, the European Commission and the European Chemical Industry.

In April 1994, the first version of the Uniform System for the Evaluation of Substances (USES 1.0) was launched to comply with an action point of the Netherlands National Environmental Policy Plan. USES is a tool for the rapid, quantitative assessment of the hazards and risks of chemical substances, including new substances, existing substances, agricultural pesticides and biocides. It was developed to be applied as a decision-support system by the central government, by industry and institutes in the private sector and by international fora. Since hazard and risk assessment must be transparent to all users and easy to perform, USES 1.0 is well documented and available as a computer program. An overview of this system will be presented including its objectives, the national and international framework, the general principles involved, as well as the structure and the content of the models used.