ZeroPM

• Episode 14: Chemical Stripes – Visualizing Chemical Trends of the Past Influencing Today - with Dagny Aurich and Emma Schymanski

  Live from SETAC Europe 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Dagny Aurich and Emma Schymanski from the Univesity of Luxembourg about how the "climate stripes" data visualisation approach for climate change was adapted to "chemical stripes" to show the increasing ubiquity of persistent compounds in society and the enviornment. The number of chemicals threatening global health is rising rapidly, with increasing numbers of persistent compounds accumulating in our environment. There are alarming signals that elimination of existing and prevention of further contamination can no longer be delayed. Communicating this need for action to the scientific and non-scientific community in an understandable way poses a challenge for many researchers. This work shows the possibility to use chemical stripes to help communicate this message, modifying the existing graphics of the climate stripes - showing the trend of global warming - and applying it to the chemical space. Specific persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), triazines and triazoles were selected based on their presence in regulatory lists, such as the Stockholm Convention. With the use of patent data for those compounds coming from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the comparison to the rise of overall chemical numbers registered in databases like the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry, a definite trend can be seen: Patent and overall chemical numbers are on the rise and regulations do not stop this trend. Often the drafting, discussion, and adoption of legislation takes decades, even when there is need for quick action. The minimalistic but intuitive visualization of the chemical stripes helps communicate this information by indicating the evolving chemical numbers in traffic-light colours. The chemical and historical data presented, using the model of stripes, will be accompanied with open-source code (in progress) for others to generate their own stripes for a given set of chemicals. The colour scheme raises awareness of the "red" state we face today, with environmental pollution impacting our health and the ecosystems we live in. All substance classes investigated so far revealed the same pattern. Overall, the aim of these graphics is to emphasize the urgent need for elimination and prevention of persistent chemicals by illustrating the exponential growth of patent and chemical numbers over time, in the hope that this will help with the identification and prioritization of harmful substance classes and to help stimulate further action, without decades of delay. See Dagny and Emma's presentation at SETAC here: https://zenodo.org/record/7885032 And the original publication showing the chemical stripes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01735 To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our ⁠⁠Zenodo Community⁠⁠ , ⁠youtube channel ⁠and our webpage to find all our resources  ⁠⁠ZeroPM.eu⁠⁠.

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• Episode 13: Need information on transformation products? There's an app for that! - with Emma Palm

  Live from SETAC Europe 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Emma Palm (Univesity of Luxembourg) about an app she developed to curate transformation product results, shiny TPs! An important consideration for understanding the hazards posed from different compounds is the transformation products (TPs) they form once they enter the environment. Unfortunately, there is much less information available for TPs than their parent compounds, while most of the information is text based in journal articles and databases. This makes it difficult to access and include into identification workflows based on high resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) and other analyses. One such database with text-based TP information is PubChem, which contains a lot of TP information, especially in the “Metabolism and Metabolites” section. In addition, PubChem runs a text mining software (LeadMine), which identifies chemical names in the text-based sections of the database. To better utilize this information, we have built a shiny app which will allow users to go through the text mined information in the Hazardous substance databank (HSDB) dataset to identify which of the extracted chemical names are TPs. After downloading the entire HSDB dataset and filtering based on the precursor compounds of interest, the app will display the structure of the precursor and the potential TP extracted via text mining, together with the HSDB text snippets to allow the user to identify whether the extracted structure is indeed a TP of the precursor. The information can then be saved in a table and downloaded for further analysis, or central upload as formal transformation reactions. In addition, the user has the option of saving the chemical names of TPs not identified by the text mining software together with their SMILES, to fill database gaps. The app has so far been applied to compounds from several datasets (28 from the NORMAN-SLE and 8 from the PubChem PFAS Tree, as well as 33 PBT compounds on the SIN-list). Of the 366 chemicals identified by the text mining software, 60 were new reactions that were not already available in the transformation products dataset in PubChem, the majority of which were found among the NORMAN and PBT compounds. Among these reactions were transformation products of azo dyes such as benzidine which has carcinogenic properties. In addition, some persistent substructures were identified in the TPs. This shows promise for expanding the current TP datasets available in databases such as PubChem as well as for improving TP suspect lists and furthering the understanding of the fate of environmental contaminants. See Emma's presentation at SETAC here: https://zenodo.org/record/7885830 To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our ⁠Zenodo Community⁠ , youtube channel and our webpage to find all our resources  ⁠ZeroPM.eu⁠.

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• Episode 12: Approaching variable data when assessing substance mobility - with Sivani Baskaran

  Live from SETAC Europe 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Sivani Baskaran (Norwegian Geotechnical Institute) about the how to assess mobility in relation to the new chemical hazard classes PMT and vPvM. Chemical hazard and risk assessments often use physical-chemical properties to categorize and identify chemicals of concerns. Recently, the European Commission introduced a draft revision of the classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) legislation that contained new chemical hazard categories, including persistent, mobile, and toxic (PMT) and very persistent and very mobile (vPvM) substances. Persistence is derived from the simulated half-life of a chemical in different systems (aquatic, soil, and sedimentary), depending on the compartment and degree of persistence evaluated, while mobility is determined based on the logarithmic organic carbon–water partition ratios (log Koc). But what is to be done when the log Koc data is either variable or uncertain? Sivani presents a way forward using a Bayesian approach. See Sivani's poster here: https://zenodo.org/record/7907080#.ZHiDSXZBz-g To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our Zenodo Community and of  ZeroPM.eu. Recorded during the SETAC Europe Dublin Conference, May 1st, 2023. ZeroPM is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036756.

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• Episode 11: The Implementation of the Essential-Use concept in the REACH regulation - with Romain Figuière

  Live from SETAC 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Romain Figuière (Stockholm University) about the implementation of the Essential-Use concept in the REACH regulation. With ZeroPM colleagues, they approach this using "intentionally added microplastics" as a case study, by considering whether in products that #microplastics were essentially added to were essential for their uses, according to the current definition of the Essential-Use concept. To follow more of the work of ZeroPM, follow our Zenodo Community and of  ZeroPM.eu. Recorded during the SETAC Europe Dublin Conference, May 1st, 2023.   ZeroPM is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036756.

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• Episode 10: The Science-Policy Panel to contribute further to the sound management of chemicals and waste and to prevent pollution - with Joanke van Dijk

  Live from SETAC 2023 - Raoul Wolf hosts a series of ZeroPM podcasts. In this episode he interviews Joanke van Dijk (University of Amsterdam) about her involvement with SETAC in relation to the establishment of an international Science-Policy Panel to contribute further to the sound management of chemicals and waste and to prevent pollution. The mandate for this panel is currently being negotiated under OEWG1.2 of UNEP. Joanke discusses her hopes for the panel, and in particular what the role is of young scientists. To follow more of the work of the WP5 Substance Grouping team, follow our Zenodo Community and of  ZeroPM.eu. Recorded during the SETAC Europe Dublin Conference, May 1st, 2023.   ZeroPM is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036756. Episodesegmenter

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