Dr. Magdalena Mair
Statistical Ecotoxicology, BayCEER (Homepage)
Donnerstag, 10.07.2025 12:30-14:00, H6, Geo

Data-driven approaches to the environmental risk assessment of chemicals and microplastic particles

Data driven approaches are becoming increasingly important for the environmental risk assessment of chemicals and other pollutants. While traditional approaches are largely based on standard experiments conducted with few surrogate test species under controlled and artificial conditions in the lab, new methods are now envisioned that ideally allow to reliably extrapolate from lab to field, from in vitro to in vivo tests, from tested species to untested ones and from tested to untested pollutants. Major aims of these computational approaches are to reduce animal testing and accelerate the identification of likely problematic pollutants at an early stage. While comparably sophisticated methods are in use for the regulatory assessment of pesticides and many other chemical pollutants, newer contaminants including micro- and nanoplastic particles lack a regulatory framework so far and data bases for the training of predictive models are largely lacking to date. In addition to new computational approaches and developments in microplastics risk assessments, traditional regulatory ecotoxicology currently faces a transition in the statistical approaches used for the analysis of the generated data. Several initiatives have been launched working on the renewal of statistics guidance documents on a European and global level which all aim at improving the reliability of regulatory decisions. In this talk I will introduce new trait-based approaches to the risk assessment of micro- and nanoplastic particles and discuss the importance and availability of adequate data sources for predictive modelling. I will show advances we made in the development of microplastic databases as a new basis for predictive modelling, show how machine learning models can be used in the future to speed up ecotoxicity testing to improve data coverage and give examples on how existing microplastic effects databases can be used for risk assessment purposes. In addition, I will demonstrate how statistical research can create direct policy impact on a regulatory level and discuss novel developments in this field.

Weitere Informationen:

• BayCEER Kolloquium_MagdalenaMair_10.07.2025.pdf

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