Our Expertise
How we can help you
At the core of our business, we perform two main tasks - hazard characterisation and risk assessment. We perform these across a variety of industries, helping thousands of companies comply with their requirements. Of course, within our hazard and risk assessment activities, we have naturally developed and utilised other skills, which are included in 'our expertise', below. If you're not sure whether we can help, please get in touch and we'll be happy to arrange a call to discuss how we can best assist you.
Hazard Characterisation
Our hazard assessments, generally based on in-depth searches of the scientific literature, aim to define the dose-response for all routes of each of a chemical’s toxicological propensities.
Risk Assessment
Our health risk assessments convert the toxicological hazard profile to a health-based guidance value, and compare this reference point to an estimate of human exposure.
Literature Searching
Robust risk assessments rely upon quality data. We are experienced searchers of major toxicity databases, giving us valuable access to Expert Group and primary reports.
Read-Across
We routinely use read-across (using toxicity data on a structurally-similar compound to evaluate a substance that has been inadequately tested) in our assessments, and have often incorporated it into regulatory submissions (e.g. REACH).
(Quantitative) Structure-Activity Relationships
We strive to help clients fill data gaps without a potentially costly and animal-intensive trip to the testing laboratory, by using computer models to predict the toxicological characteristics of an untested compound.
ADME/TK Assessments
Generating new TK data involves the use of animals, is time consuming and extremely costly (particularly if radiolabels are required). We make expert predictions, taking into account known toxicity data, structure and physico-chemical properties.
Safety Benchmarks
Identifying or deriving a safety benchmark is a critical step in determining the risk of a chemical to human health. These values are estimates of the maximum exposure, generally qualified by route, that will pose no significant threat.
Testing Strategies
We can offer advice on the practicalities of designing a testing programme and will support you from approving the protocols to reviewing the final reports.
Endocrine Disruption
Endocrine-active chemicals that have the ability to disrupt the intricate and well-balanced human endocrine system (also known as endocrine disruptors (EDs)) can be of significant toxicological concern.