Verisk 3E's Hans Plugge Utilizes Acute Fish Toxicity Data to Coauthor Paper

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September 3, 2020Safer Chemical Analytics TeamBlog

Hans Plugge, our Manager of Safer Chemical Analytics, coauthored with Dr. Jakub Kostal of George Washington University, a recent paper on selection of the most appropriate study for regulatory assessment.

The paper entitled “Quantifying Uncertainty in Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment: MUST, a Modular Uncertainty Scoring Tool” by Jakub Kostal, Hans Plugge and Will Rademan will be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology as DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c02224.

The paper utilizes acute fish toxicity data from Verisk 3E’s physical, chemical, toxicological and eco-toxicological (PCTEC) database, available to Verisk 3E customers in 3E Insight™ for Chemicals.

During an assessment, be it risk, hazard or alternatives, one often needs to decide on “the” study for the base assessment. MUST is a methodology for optimizing study selection based on the inherent uncertainty and quality of published studies. The paper utilized data for chemicals that had more than 50 acute fish toxicity tests in PCTEC. The paper in detail describes the methodology allowing for the selection of the optimum study, not the average of studies.

In regulatory assessments (perceived) bias (e.g. quality judgment) by the assessor also often plays a role. MUST allows assessors to quantify their bias prior to study assessment and compare the results with an unbiased selection. Although examples here relate to ecotoxicological data, the method can be used for all types of (non)toxicological data.

For further information on MUST and our PCTEC data, please email Hans Plugge.








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