Prof. Dr. Willie Peijnenburg is Professor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of the Faculty of Science of Leiden University, Leiden (The Netherlands), research chair “Environmental Toxicology and Biodiversity”, and senior researcher at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven (The Netherlands). His research profile is best characterised as being based on long-years’ experience in the areas of chemical fate and safety assessment, whilst gradually moving in the broad theme of LCA-based Safety and Sustainability by Design (SSbD) assessment. This theme allows to integrate his chemical safety experience with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), Economic and Social costing, and SSbD assessment. His research in the area of chemical fate and safety assessment has resulted in over 450 scientific publications. Thereupon, he recently published around 20 papers on LCA/SSbD-related topics including a framework for SSbD for batteries.
Key current research interests include:
1 - Safety and Sustainability assessment of chemicals and chemical processes, including aspects of Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Impact Assessment, Economic and Social costing, along the life cycle of chemicals and products.
2 - Implementation of AI/ML in chemical risk assessment, with an overall aim of optimizing chemical risk assessment in terms of effectiveness (reduced time/costs) for perspective as well as retrospective assessment and in terms of minimized use of animal testing by exploiting alternatives to laboratory testing.
He obtained his PhD at the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) and he currently is involved in research aimed at underpinning the risk assessment of chemical substances, amongst others dealing with the processes at the interface of environmental chemistry and toxicity in aquatic and terrestrial environments. Current research topics include nanoparticle and microplastics related research, fate assessment, transformation/dissolution, impact of water composition on fate of chemicals. Apart from research he is also involved in the risk assessment of chemicals according to REACH. He has published over 450 scientific papers.
Session 12 – Risk Assessment
Identification and assessment of chemicals and products that are safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) is getting increased attention. Hazard assessment is an indispensable part of any SSbD-concept but both hazard and SSbD assessment are severely hampered by lack of data, which is obviously especially the case for innovative materials and products. This session focusses on the integration of SSbD and Risk Assessment and does so by on the one hand integrating the concepts of risk and safety assessment, and LCA with SSbD. On the other hand there is a focus on predictive tools to lighten the key issue of lack of data. Predictive tools of interest include QSAR-related approaches and methods based on AI/ML applications.
