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The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses) hosted a two-day workshop on Endocrine Disruptors: Exposure and Potential Impact on Consumers Health, bringing together participants from international organizations, academia, research institutes and from German, Swedish, Danish and French governmental agencies. The main objective of the workshop was to share knowledge and experiences on endocrine disruptors (ED) exposure and potential impact on consumers' health, to identify current risk assessment practices and knowledge gaps and issue recommendations on research needs and future collaboration. The following topics were reviewed: (1) Definition of ED, (2) endpoints to be considered for Risk assessment (RA) of ED, (3) non-monotonic dose response curves, (4) studies to be considered for RA (regulatory versus academic studies), (5) point of departure and uncertainty factors, (6) exposure assessment, (7) regulatory issues related to ED. The opinions expressed during this workshop reflect day-to-day experiences from scientists, regulators, researchers, and others from many different countries in the fields of risk assessment, and were regarded by the attendees as an important basis for further discussions. Accordingly, the participants underlined the need for more exchange in the future to share experiences and improve the methodology related to risk assessment for endocrine disrupters

The default approach in the risk assessment (RA) of chemicals is to assess external exposure by combining different sources and routes of exposure. This kind of approach contains various uncertainties and may overestimate exposure, since conservative estimates are needed due to the limited data on, for example, the absorption of the chemical and interspecies and intraspecies differences. Human biomonitoring (HBM) can help improve RA by providing measured data on combined exposures. In some cases, biomonitoring data can even provide a direct link to health effects. In some cases, biomonitoring allows to link exposure to specific contexts such as occupational settings. Although recent years have seen good examples of the use of biomonitoring in the risk assessment of chemicals, much work is still needed to improve its use in regulatory RA and human impact assessment (HIA). The European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) was recently launched for fulfilling the gap between the exposure to hazardous chemical agents and their impact on human health. One of the aims of the HBM4EU project is to enhance the use of HBM data in RA and HIA of chemicals in different regulatory contexts including legislation on chemicals, plant protection products, and biocides, as well as legislation on cosmetics, food safety, and occupational safety. RA models for mixtures are also considered. Firstly, current RA practices are evaluated: is the use of biomonitoring integrated with the available RA guidance, and do give RA schemes have good examples of the advanced use of biomonitoring? A survey is also conducted to gather information from national regulatory risk assessors (in the EU, but also in non-EU countries) on their risk assessment practices, the use of HBM, and the obstacles and challenges related to its use. The challenges of the use of HBM data in RA may include a lack of guidance in the use of biomonitoring, a lack of knowledge regarding the interpretation of biomonitoring results, or the inability to link biomonitoring ...