Testing of chemicals

With the aim to accelerate the pace of chemical safety testing and assessment, reduce the use of laboratory animals and to better protect human health and the environment, the Working Party of the National Coordinators to the Test Guidelines Programme (WNT), supported by the OECD Chemicals and Biotechnology Committee, calls for urgent mobilisation of national and regional resources for the demonstration of reproducibility and reliability of methods developed in single laboratories.

The OECD is committed to using state of the art tools to evaluate chemical safety. As a first step towards using new technologies for assessing the effects of chemicals, the data collected and reported can be standardised to all decision makers to more easily evaluate effects and share information.

Just like any other chemical substance, nanomaterials have to be assessed for their safety using appropriate tools and methodologies. For that reason, the OECD Programme on Manufactured Nanomaterials and the OECD Test Guidelines Programme collaborate to identify and develop standardised methods that can be used to generate relevant and reliable data.