My teaching relates to ecotoxicology and chemical risk assessment in various facets, often related to the toxicology and ecotoxicology of chemical mixtures. Currently I am also the responsible programme co-ordinator for the International Master Programme on Ecotoxicology.
I lecture on the 2 major Ecotoxicology courses of our Institute (physiologically oriented and ecologically oriented) and in several other courses at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology. I also run (together with my colleague Martin Hassellöv) the 15 ECTS course on chemical risk assessment at our Department, which is given every year in the second half of the winter term.
Just to quote our course plan:
Course outline and aims
The course will provide an overview of the risk assessment of chemicals. The course will provide the scientific background to current approaches and will give an overview of how such risk assessments are actually implemented in national and trans-national procedures and of the socio-political context in which this process takes place. The course will provide details on important regulatory frameworks, such as for example the IPPC directive (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control), the Biocide directive, the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) or the REACH regulation (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals). Although the major focus will be on European approaches, comparisons with other methodologies such as those put forward by the US Environmental Protection Agency or the OECD will be made.
The course will follow the typical three steps during in risk assessment of chemicals and will provide an overview on approaches and methodologies for (a) hazard assessment (b) exposure assessment and (c) risk assessment of chemicals. Although the course focuses on risk assessment for the environment, references to human health risk assessment will be made from time to time, in order to analyse commonalities and differences between these two major risk assessment fields.
There are no obligatory course books, as the only recent book on chemical risk assessment that covers both, human and environmental assessments is deemed too expensive (“Risk Assessment of Chemicals: An Introduction” by C.J. van Leeuwen and T.G. Vermeire, 160 €). Instead materials will be provided on the fly in the form of scientific articles, book excerpts and official guidance documents.
The course is divided into the following parts:
- Lectures
Classical lectures, taking 2 hours each with 1-2 breaks in between. Handouts of the slides will be distributed - “Student lectures”
Lectures held be pairs of students participating in the course (mandatory for each participant). The specific topics will be distributed at the beginning of the course. The final number of “student lectures” will depend on the final number of participants of the course. - Feedback meetings
Meeting in which the participants have the opportunity to ask open questions about previous lectures and seminar. Also upcoming parts of the course (such as the distribution of topic for the “student lectures” and projects) will be introduced. Technicalities such as presentation techniques will also be discussed here. - Computer excercises
2 specific dates in which the participants will gather practical experiences on how to gather the necessary data and on how to conduct the first assessments. - Project work
Project work in small groups on a selected topic.
After taking the course you should
- have a sound understanding of the scientific principles behind chemical risk assessment;
- comprehend that risk assessment is a tiered approach that builds on an iterative refinement of two principal blocks, exposure and ecotoxicological assessment and how the results from these evaluations are finally condensed into the actual risk assessment;
- understand the crucial role of uncertainty evaluations in this process, and how this is considered;
- be able to describe how the risk assessment process is adapted to specific situations (e.g. prospective vs. retrospective, local vs. global assessments), to specific environmental compartments (e.g. aquatic, terrestrial) and to different groups of chemicals (e.g. general industrial chemicals, plant protection products, biocides, pharmaceuticals);
- know the differences and commonalities between environmental and human health risk assessment;
- have an overview of major European regulatory frameworks, especially REACH;
- recognise the conflicts between scientific knowledge and demands on the one hand and the need for pragmatism in routine risk assessment on the other;
- realise the socio-political dimension of the process;
- appreciate, that risk assessment is not the end of the story but is followed and accompanied by risk management, risk mitigation and cost-benefit analyses;
