Conference Sessions

The traditional approach to safety evaluations of chemicals is based on animal testing. The goal of alternative approaches, including New Approach Methods (NAMs), is to reduce the use of animals in chemical testing while maintaining scientific rigour to ensure the protection of human health and the environment. This session aims to highlight the state of knowledge regarding the development, use, and reliability of alternative approaches to underpin chemical hazard and risk assessments. 

Session Chair: EPA New Zealand 

This session invites speakers to explore the power of collaboration between researchers, industry, and government in driving transformative outcomes in pollution monitoring, mitigation, and management. By showcasing projects where strong partnerships have led to significant environmental, societal, or economic impacts, the session aims to inspire and guide future collaborative efforts to tackle pollution issues in our environment. Participants would gain insights into best practices for fostering effective collaboration, overcoming common challenges, and leveraging diverse expertise to translate research into real-world solutions.

Session Chair: Jackie Myers, AQUEST RMIT University

This session tackles regulatory needs in risk assessment, focusing on the pressing challenges of resource limitations and time constraints within Australia and New Zealand’s chemical regulatory bodies. With a growing backlog of chemicals requiring review and risk management controls, regulators face an immense workload in assessing and updating use requirements for hundreds of chemicals currently in use, let alone new chemicals being introduced to market. This session will bring together regulators, industry experts, and academic researchers to discuss how enhanced collaboration and technology can streamline regulatory processes, improve assessment efficiency, and support regulatory bodies in managing extensive review portfolios. The session will explore issues such as the barriers in evaluating scientific research, the integration of assessments into risk management decisions, and how new tools could significantly reduce assessment timelines and help clear backlogs.

Session Chair: Chris Lee-Steere, Australian Environment Agency Pty Ltd

Contaminants in consumer products and cosmetics; Analytical and regulatory challenges and advancements

Despite stricter regulation on cosmetic products in the EU, banned contaminants such as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are still being detected in imported cosmetics and other consumer products posing health risks to communities. This session invites presentations that discuss (i) advancements in analytical methods applied for detecting intentional and unintentional contaminants such as PFAS, metals, plasticisers, anti-bacteriacides, microplastics, etc., including use of High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry, (ii) case studies and data reporting contaminants in consumer products, and (iii) regulatory challenges and opportunities in relation to policies addressing contaminants in everyday products. 

Session Chair: Sarit Kaserzon, The University of Queensland; Melania Kah, University of Auckland & Sara Ghorbani Gorji, Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS), The University of Queensland

Contaminants in soil: Filling knowledge gaps and enhancing decision making

We are dependent on soil for almost every aspect of our lives – including food and fibre production, flood and climate regulation, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, foundation for human infrastructure and water purification and soil contaminant reduction. Soil hosts around a quarter of the planet’s biodiversity, yet there remain huge gaps in our knowledge of contaminants in soil and how they affect these functions, which limits our ability to safeguard the soil resource. This session will provide an indication of the state of the science related to contaminants in soil including contaminant bioavailability, contaminant fate, effects on soil biota, human health and aquatic systems in environments ranging from agricultural systems to contaminated land risk assessment, and use of this information in regulatory decision-making.  

Session Chairs: Jo Cavanagh, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research & Albert Juhasz, University of South Australia

Contaminants of emerging concern 

Many chemicals that enter our environment are not subject to routine monitoring. As some of these chemicals have the potential to have adverse effects to people and/or the environment further investigation is warranted. This session will cover aspects relating to contaminants emerging of concern research, regulation, and outreach, including but not limited to (eco)toxicology and environmental fate, new analytical techniques, and horizon scanning for new contaminants emerging concern.

Session Chair: EPA, New Zealand

The session highlights how ecotoxicology and environmental monitoring operates in systems that are challenging due to climatic extremes (polar, tropical, arid, etc). It will also identify the challenges of operating in these environments and how processes can be adapted to suit these systems.

Session Chair: Shelley Templeman, Tropwater

Research synthesis—including evidence reviews and meta-analyses—has been crucial to advancing ecotoxicology, guiding both research and policy applications. However, current synthesis practices in the field often vary in scope, transparency, and methodological rigour, raising concerns about the reliability of evidence and the risk of bias or misinformation affecting science-based decisions and policies. As the field of ecotoxicology continues to expand, regarding both the number of contaminants and type of endpoints, the need for systematic and rigorous evidence synthesis is critical to keep stakeholders informed and policies current. This session showcases powerful, under-utilised tools and methodologies that can transform evidence synthesis in ecotoxicology. We will explore methods such as systematic mapping, bibliometric analyses, text mining, and dynamic databases as means of creating unbiased and accessible evidence systems. Talks will demonstrate how we can use these tools to uncover research gaps, identify field-wide trends, remove redundancies, and reveal essential connections within the evidence landscape. Attendees will gain practical insights into enhancing the reliability, transparency, and efficiency of evidence synthesis. By advancing these methodologies, this session aims to support more robust scientific outcomes and foster decision-making rooted in high-quality ecotoxicological research.

Session Chair: Marcus Michelangeli, Griffith University

Omics-based analytical techniques have become invaluable tools in ecotoxicology and environmental monitoring, offering insights into molecular changes due to chemical exposure and other stressors. Key recent advancements include understanding mixture effects, applying omics tools to field studies, and characterising natural fluctuations in metabolites, lipids, proteins and genes to guide meaningful interpretations. This session will explore novel omics-based approaches and disciplines, like data integration, bioinformatics and chemometrics, and case studies across diverse ecosystems and exposure scenarios. The session aims to highlight the importance of omics techniques in ecotoxicology and eco-surveillance.

Session Chairs: Steve Melvin, Griffith University & David Beale, CSIRO

For many chemicals the diet is the primary route of human exposure. The ability of the chemical to cause adverse effects (hazard assessment), the relationship between dose and effect (dose-response), and the magnitude of the anticipated dose (dietary exposure) are the major components of food chemical risk assessment. Food chemical risk assessment and risk management informed by risk assessment are essential for the protection of human health and the smooth operation of trade in food. Consequently, principles and methods of food chemical risk assessment and risk management are well established at the national and international level. This session will introduce a selection of the chemical hazards that may be present in the diet and aspects of their toxicological and dietary exposure assessment. The relationship between risk assessment and risk management at a global level will also be introduced.

Session Chairs: Stuart Creton, Food Standards Australia New Zealand & Jefferson Fowles, New Zealand Food Safety

Future-Proofing Wastewater Treatment: Tackling Emerging Contaminants with a Holistic Approach – it’s more than just PFAS

This session will explore approaches to tackling emerging contaminants of concern in wastewaters, increasingly understood to be hazardous to both people and the environment. Industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, pathogens, personal care products, etc., are part of modern living and are discharged into our sewers every day. Our existing wastewater treatment plants were not designed to treat emerging contaminants and may not be easily adapted to provide the required treatment. Technology solutions tend to be developed for one contaminant at a time, but a holistic understanding is required to future proof the decisions that need to be made. At the same time, water scarcity and need to recover vital nutrients for agriculture are becoming increasingly urgent problems which factor into decisions for wastewater treatment. This session will bring together regulators, industry experts, and researchers to discuss the problems and whether holistic solutions are feasible with current or emerging technologies. The session will explore regulatory control measures, bolt on additions to existing infrastructure, leveraging natural systems, the constraints to water security and reuse, and funding mechanisms. By bringing together knowledge from differing fields, this session will promote multidisciplinary understanding of the problem and identify holistic solutions pathways for emerging contaminant management in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.

Session Chairs: Becky Macdonald, Jacobs NZ Ltd & Monique Binet, CSIRO

Identifying 'ecologically relevant endpoints' for microbial processes to inform Environmental Quality Guidelines and One Health approaches

The Australian and New Zealand, environmental quality guidelines (e.g., ANZG and NEPM) are used to advise “best-practice” for Environmental Risk Assessments (ERAs), and often underpin regulatory decisions. However, they overlook impacts to microorganisms despite international calls to address this gap for over a decade. Microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, and archaea) comprise around 90% of the biomass in the world's aquatic environments. Microbial communities are essential for healthy ecosystems through the ecological services they provide such as primary production, decontamination, nutrient cycling, and disease resilience. Anthropogenic contamination of soil, waters, and sediments can cause functional imbalances resulting in a loss of ecosystem services and may also stimulate the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The development of AMR and biogeochemically dysfunctional hotspots can impact animal and human health, and food security, and, therefore, a One Health approach within environmental risk assessment frameworks is needed. 

The exclusion of microbial endpoints to date, has not been without good reason and there are significant challenges in establishing the trans-disciplinary approaches needed to solve this issue. The advancement of genomic and multi-omic approaches can provide accurate measurements of contaminant impacts on microbial communities, their functions, and their ability to stimulate and spread AMR. These approaches are already widely used in environmental monitoring and have a key role to play in the development of standard methods for surveillance of environmental AMR. This session will focus on studies that assess the impacts of contaminants on microbial community structure and function, and those considering ecologically-relevant measurement endpoints. It will also explore approaches incorporating microbial endpoints into ERA and decision-making frameworks, e.g., studies that are testing traditional ecotoxicological paradigms using new multi-omic technologies, as well as studies that describe advancements in detecting and/or modelling of AMR impacts in environmentally relevant scenarios, and/or regulating AMR in the aquatic environment. There will be a panel discussion with leading experts to identify next steps for enabling microbial-based endpoints for use in environmental quality guidelines.

Session Chair: Monique Binet, CSIRO

The objective of this session is to gain an understanding of the impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment with a focus on the experiences, knowledge, perspectives, and practices of Indigenous populations. Understanding Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, and practices is critical to respectful engagement and the formation of meaningful long-term partnerships to address shared challenges.

Session Chair: EPA New Zealand's Kaupapa Kura Taiao group

Micro- and nanoplastics are pervasive contaminants that originate from diverse sources, including household and industrial processes, consumer products, and tyre rubber particles. These contaminants are increasingly recognized as significant contributors to environmental pollution, with complex implications for ecosystem and human health. This session will explore the environmental emissions, fate processes, and health impacts of micro- and nanoplastics, including tyre wear particles, and their pathways into air, soil, food, and water systems. The session will examine how these contaminants interact with biological and chemical systems, their environmental persistence, and their accumulation in critical ecosystems. In addition, the session will delve into the human exposure pathways to micro and nanoplastics, including inhalation and ingestion, and investigate the potential toxicological and public health implications. By integrating insights from environmental science, toxicology, epidemiology, and policy research, this session aims to advance understanding of the Australasian and global plastic pollution crisis and inform strategies for mitigation and risk assessment. 

Session Chairs: Cassandra Rauert, University of Queensland & Elvis Okoffo, University of Queensland

Substances, including certain pesticides, solvents, and pharmaceuticals that contain ototoxicants, can negatively affect how the ear functions, causing hearing loss, and/or affect balance. Ototoxic chemicals are classified as neurotoxicants, cochleotoxicants, or vestibulotoxicants based on the part of the ear they damage. Effects can include speech discrimination dysfunction, compressed loudness, frequency resolution problems, inability to detect gaps between sounds and loss of the ability to localise sound. Speech discrimination dysfunction can also make working in noisy environments difficult and increase the risk of workplace injuries due to an inability to hear co-workers, environmental sounds and warning signals. The risk ototoxicity is increased when workers are exposed to these chemicals while working around elevated noise levels. Research on ototoxicants and their interactions with noise is limited. The dose-response, LOAEL, and NOAEL have been identified in animal experiments for only a few substances.

Session Chair: ACTRA conference organising sub-committee member, to be determined

This session provides a platform for regulatory scientists/technical specialists, policy makers, and  decision-makers in chemical assessment, reporting, and risk management to exchange information regarding scientific outputs, policy and tool development, and regulatory decisions.

Session Chair: EPA New Zealand

The regulation of metals in the environment is particularly complex, as metal ecotoxicity is strongly influenced by physico-chemical parameters, such as, pH, DOC, alkalinity, and hardness.  In order to ensure adequate ecosystem protection, the risk assessment of metals requires high-quality exposure and effects data, as well as suitable guideline values that account for metal bioavailability. Over the past two decades, modelling approaches to consider bioavailability in guideline value derivation have advanced significantly and now include the biotic ligand model (BLM) and multiple linear regression (MLR) models. Despite recent advances in regulatory frameworks, the derivation and implementation of bioavailability-based guideline values remains a challenge across many global jurisdictions. These setbacks are largely attributed to a scarcity of available monitoring data and limited bioavailability-based models that have been appropriately validated with endemic species and local water chemistry conditions, both of which are required to predict metal bioavailability and to derive appropriate national and site-specific guideline values. Furthermore, due to their perceived complexity, the use of bioavailability models in regulation for deriving and applying site-specific guideline values has lagged behind their development. The aim of this session is to share expertise on the latest approaches for metals environmental risk assessment and regulation, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. 

Session Chair: Jenny Stauber, La Trobe University

This session aims to focus interest on the effects of toxicants and/or environmental factors on wildlife, particularly on native and threatened local species.  It will cover the challenges these species face, from individual health issues to ecosystem-wide effects.

Session Chairs: Olivier Champeau, NZ Environmental Protection Authority;  Dayanthi Nugegoda, RMIT University & Anne Vignier, Cawthron Institute