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Dear Reader,
The EPMF celebrates its 15-year anniversary in December. This milestone presents an opportunity to reflect on everything we have achieved since our inception in 2009 and look towards the future.
Over the past 15 years, we have grown and evolved to support the needs of our Members and adapt to the changing regulatory environment. But one thing has remained the same – our commitment to sound science and evidence-based decision making. We have worked to develop robust scientific programmes assessing the impact of precious metals on human health and the environment. Our research aims to facilitate compliance with European chemicals legislation and to promote chemicals risk management measures that are proportionate for precious metals.
This newsletter highlights some of our recent research and scientific programmes. You will gain insights into our scientific work which drives the rest of our advocacy work and day-to-day activities.
As we look towards the future and the next 15 years of the EPMF, we will continue to support policymakers in developing evidence-based policies and advocate for legislation that is fit-for-purpose for the precious metals sector.
Happy reading!
France Capon
Secretary-General, European Precious Metals Federation
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Sound science is essential for effective regulation
By Jelle Mertens, EPMF Senior Scientific Manager, Brussels Belgium
Over the past 15 years, the EPMF has supported scientifically valid assessments in a regulatory context. This is not the simplest way of acting, but it is for sure the most valid one. To this end, we have generated an extensive scientific database for all our substances.
The EU’s REACH Regulation has obviously been a big driver for this work as it aims to adopt the most efficient testing approaches for substances. Approaches like read-across allow for the grouping of substances so that relevant information on one substance can be used to predict the properties of another target substance. This means that there is no need to perform experimental tests on all substances. The definition of these approaches under REACH has triggered a lot of pro-active scientific work from the EPMF to develop and justify its approaches for testing precious metals.
The EPMF aims to be a reliable scientific partner for both industry and policymakers and to publish as much of this scientific work as possible. A good example of this is the comparative in vivo toxicokinetics work with silver powder and silver compounds published in 2023 (Mertens et al., 2023). This study has already been used for updating the REACH dossiers and risk assessments of these two silver compounds. There are ongoing discussions under the Biocides Regulation to develop a harmonised classification under the EU’s CLP Regulation for silver metal and relevant biocidal silver products (like silver nitrate and silver chloride). More recently, we have finalised a university project to investigate the possibility for environmental read-across between different complexes of platinum and palladium. This work has just been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and strengthened our scientific approaches (Michaud-Vaucourt et al, in press).
Aside from scientific research on precious metals, the EPMF also engages under a multimetallic umbrella. A successful example of our cross-industry work is under the Environmental Toxicology Advisory Panel (ETAP) to avoid the use of complex and questionable alternative techniques for testing water quality under the proposed Water Framework Directive (WFD) instead of simple metal analysis of water samples. We collectively investigated some of the candidate approaches and published our assessment in the scientific literature (Brix et al., 2022), which has been referenced several times within the WFD. Also under the WFD, silver has been mentioned as being a potential trigger of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To verify the role of metals (including silver) in AMR development, we are currently performing a literature review with the University of Leuven in Belgium and University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The work will be ready for submission to a scientific journal by the end of the year.
Publication of our research in scientific journals ensures the defense, acceptance and global use of the EPMF work. Unfortunately, not all work is published due to several factors. Some of our extensive work, like the Extended One Generation Reproductive Toxicity study with silver acetate performed in 2022 or the 2-year carcinogenicity study with silver acetate (soon to be finalised) are extremely complex and should be authored by a specialist toxicologist before publication. More generic approaches like our read-across justifications lack scientific novelty and are low on the priority list for publication in scientific journals. Nevertheless, the EPMF will continue to find ways to publish its data and assessments where possible to maintain its position as a reliable partner in the EU regulatory and scientific landscape.
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Silver bioavailability project for science-based water quality criteria
By Nada Basic & Karel De Schamphelaere, GhEnToxLab, Ghent University, Belgium
Silver is widely used in several everyday applications from electronics to medicine and personal care. This wide range of applications also leads to potential environmental emissions. To safeguard ecosystems, the EU has developed environmental quality standards (EQS) which set maximum allowed pollutant concentrations in the air, water and soil. European Member States are required to implement these EQS under the Water Framework Directive (WFD), ensuring that pollutants like silver are regulated at a national level.
For metals, including silver, the EQS are usually derived from bioavailability models. This type of model is crucial because toxicity in water is influenced not only by the total concentration of the substance but also by water characteristics. For example, natural organic matter, which originates from the soil surrounding river catchments, can bind metals, ultimately reducing their bioavailability and toxicity. The presence of calcium or magnesium, for example in hard water, competes with metals for entry into the cells of an organism, offering protective effects. To account for these, and other factors, models have been developed to predict toxicity of metals based on local water parameters, but such bioavailability models for silver are still needed.
The EPMF has commissioned a new collaborative research project between Ghent University, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and ARCHE Consulting which aims to develop such models by 2027. Research at Ghent University focuses on toxicity experiments with algae and water fleas in natural water samples from freshwater sites across Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, ensuring a wide range of European water compositions is represented. At ARCHE Consulting, fish toxicity models are being refined using existing literature data, mitigating the need for animal testing. Meanwhile, CEH researchers are employing sensitive measurement techniques to measure various forms of silver that can occur in natural waters.
We are optimistic that the combined efforts of the project partners will deliver bioavailability and toxicity models suitable for regulatory use, which will significantly enhance the science-based protection of freshwater ecosystems from their potential exposure to silver.
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Guest corner: Chemicals Management for the Zero Pollution Ambition, views by Eurometaux
By Violaine Verougstraete, Eurometaux Chemicals Management Director, Brussels, Belgium
The Zero Pollution Ambition (ZPA) is a key building block of the EU Green Deal and aims to reduce exposure of chemicals to levels that are considered safe for human health or the environment. The ZPA will be implemented through revisions of key environmental and chemicals legislations, ranging from the Industrial Emissions Directive and the Water Framework Directive to the REACH Revision. In parallel to the ZPA, the EU will implement its Biodiversity Strategy in the new mandate with the objective of reducing the impact of industrial processes and emissions, including releases from chemicals manufacturing and use, on ecosystems and biodiversity.
Considering the critical role metals play in reaching the climate and circularity objectives of the EU Green Deal, the demand for metals is expected to sharply increase. To meet the increased needs, the EU will need to develop new EU mining and processing activities while also boosting the recycling of these critical raw materials from waste products and striving for longer lifecycles of substances in products for a given function (e.g., mobility and energy storage). Several stakeholders and policymakers have already questioned the impact of the increased need and use of metals on water, soil and biodiversity.
The ZPA also brought new scientific and regulatory challenges, like demonstrating that unintentional mixtures (e.g., emissions) are safe by using a Mixture Allocation Factor (MAF). The Metals Environmental Exposure Data (MEED) collection programme was launched in 2022 and aims to provide a clear benchmark of today’s ambient metal status. This benchmark allows for modelling of releases from additional volumes and helps to understand the combined effects of relevant concentrations of metals in the environment and their impact on biodiversity.
The MEED programme was set up by the European metals sector and covers more than 20 metals. The EPMF contributes very actively to the programme and covers gold, PGMs (iridium, palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium), rhenium and silver. MEED is composed of six projects which focus on either defining today’s understanding of metals in the aquatic environment, anticipating the effect of unintentional mixtures assessment (MAF), or refining common critical release sources (e.g., sewage treatment plants). All projects contribute, in a stepwise and tiered way, to the demonstration that environmental exposures of metals are not expected to be harmful to human health or the environment.
More specifically on the MAF, research was conducted on identifying the inorganic-priority contributing substances (IPCS) which refer to the metals and inorganics that are predicted to contribute most to the overall risks of unintentional mixtures in Europe (>90%). For these IPCS, metal mixture effects and combined metals-organics effects were investigated in dedicated research and testing projects. Silver was originally identified as IPCS, but the testing results until now have not confirmed synergies with other metals. The results of these testing projects will be used to refine the default MAF to meet this new REACH requirement.
The outcomes of the MEED projects will be published in peer-reviewed literature and made available in more detail to demonstrate compliance with environmental legislation under the EU’s Water Framework Directive and chemicals legislation under REACH.
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Join us to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the EPMF on 2 December 2024!
LOCATION OF THE EVENT:
Royal Museums of Art and History
Parc du Cinquantenaire 10, 1000 Brussels
Parking available for guests: entrance at rue des Nerviens (in front of St Stanislas school)
Also easily accessible by public transport
TIME:
Cocktail: 18:00 - 19:30 |
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