Necessity of testing biocidal products and their eluates within the authorisation process aiming at an adequate environmental evaluation of mixtures

In the authorisation process of biocidal products, the joint effects of the product components (active substances and relevant additives) shall be taken into account in the environmental risk assessment according to the relevant regulatory guidance. The concept of concentration addition (CA) is the proposed default model for this assessment. Open questions in this context are the definition of ‘relevant components’ and the problem of underestimating joint toxicity by CA in the case of synergistic interactions. The aim of this project was to theoretically assess the contribution of additives in biocidal products to their overall aquatic toxicity and experimentally confirm these predictions for a selected number of wood preservatives. In addition, known or suspected synergistic interactions between product components were investigated. To this end, aquatic and terrestrial standard tests were conducted.

For further information, see the following publication:

Coors, A., Vollmar, P., Heim, J., Sacher, F., Kehrer, A. (2018). Environmental risk assessment of biocidal products: identification of relevant components and reliability of a component-based mixture assessment. Environmental Sciences Europe 30:3. [read more]

German project title: Notwendigkeit der Testung von Biozidprodukten und deren Eluaten im Rahmen der Zulassung mit dem Ziel einer adäquaten Umweltbewertung von Stoffgemischen – Erweiterung der Datenbasis für Holzschutzmittel