Use of In Vitro Data and (Q)SARs to Classify Eye Irritating Chemicals in the EU - Experience at the BfR

Summary Under the EU’s proposed new chemicals legislation REACH, the use of experimental animals will be almost completely banned from eye irritation testing of industrial chemicals. Alternative methods are at hand to identify strong irritants. However, there is still a need for reliable tools able to identify non-irritants and to discriminate between non- and moderately irritating chemicals. In addition, testing strategies are required that are capable of integrating all of these approaches with a more efficient exploitation of existing information. In this paper, these issues are addressed, based on regulatory experience gained under the EU New Chemicals notification programme.