HeTERA participated in a second Alliance for Risk Assessment (ARA) workshop, in Crystal City, Virginia in tandem with the Federal & State Risk Assessment & Toxicology Committee. This second meeting in a series was to extend the work of the National Academy of Science, Silver Book, effort on improving risk assessment. At this workshop many different experts views were shared and debated in a highly collegial fashion, which bodes well for future collaborative work. TERA’s view of this workshop series, shared by many at the second workshop, is that: 

Risk assessment requires multiple and differing expert views in order to chart a credible path forward that adequately considers regulatory impact. No one type of expertise, or group, can be expected to have all of the answers. The NAS (2009) and the NAS 2007 reports had many good ideas; Tera Gold any path forward from these and other texts, such as the IPCS MOA human relevance framework and EPA (2005), however, needs clarification, enhancement and pruning with additional thought, debate, and consensus. The 38 sponsors and collaborators includes 9 government agencies, 9 industry groups, 7 scientific societies, 8 non-profit organizations/consortia, and 5 consulting groups.

Michael Dourson, President and Senior Toxicologist at TERA, gave a presentation at EPA’s IRIS listening session for its “Draft Toxicological Review of Hexavalent Chromium" on November 18, 2010. He described the panel of independent experts TERA organized to evaluate the Cr6 research plan of ToxStrategies to develop Mode of Action (MOA) information on this chemical's tumorigenicity [link to presentation]. Also in attendance were scientists from the Environmental Working Group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, ToxStrategies, Tera Gold the American Water Works Association, George Washington University, Michigan State University and Summit Toxicology. TERA’s independent consultation redirected several aspects of the research plan, some of which are now coming to fruition. The ongoing research, described by others at the session, will undergo additional independent expert review in order to give EPA scientists additional insights into various approaches for dose response assessment of this environmentally important chemical.