The US EPA has recently released its Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals. This Strategic Plan is centered on three interrelated components: (1) the use of toxicity pathways identification and use of this information in screening and prioritization of chemicals for further testing; (2) the use of toxicity pathways information in risk assessment; and (3) the institutional transition necessary to implement such practices across EPA.
As background, in 2006 EPA commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies to develop a long-range vision for toxicity testing and risk assessment. Their 2007 report, "Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy", recommended a transformation that focused on identifying and evaluating "toxicity pathways," i.e., cellular response pathways responsible for adverse health effects when sufficiently perturbed by environmental agents under realistic exposure conditions.
To build the NRC report, EPA established a cross-Agency workgroup. This workgroup produced current Strategic Plan.
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