How omics technologies can enhance chemical safety regulation: perspectives from academia, government, and industry

Abstract

The rapid pace of industrial innovation results in an ever‐increasing number and diversity of chemicals found within industrial and consumer products. Regulations require an evaluation of the environmental and human hazards of chemicals, ultimately characterizing the risks associated with their manufacture, use, and disposal. To allow policy makers and regulators to carefully balance economic priorities with the need to protect vital ecosystems and public health, equally novel, revolutionary, and coordinated scientific approaches to hazard and risk assessment are needed. Such approaches need to be not only robust and reliable; they also need to be time‐and cost‐effective while avoiding animal testing whenever possible. There are times in every field of science when technological advances set the stage for progress at a pace that was previously inconceivable. For regulatory science, the time is now. The goal of this Perspectives column is to discuss how stakeholders foresee the use of omics data to trigger a genuine and fundamental change to redress the escalating challenges faced by industries, governments, and the public in the assessment of potential health and environmental hazards imposed by thousands of untested or under‐tested chemicals. For this Perspectives column, we asked how the different stakeholders see the current use of omics for chemical safety assessment and what are the critical advances required so OMICs can deliver valuable solutions to improve our confidence in chemical safety assessment and ultimately be incorporated into global regulatory frameworks.