ERGO at SETAC Europe 2019

02 Mar 2020

The ERGO project was well represented at the largest meeting on environmental toxicology and chemistry in Europe, SETAC Europe 2019 in Helsinki, Finland. SETAC Europe is one of five Geographic Units (GU) of the global Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), established to promote and undertake activities of SETAC in Europe. 2019’s theme, “One Environment. One Health. Sustainable Societies” was well suited to ERGO, with at least three partners giving interesting presentations introducing ERGO and covering endocrine disruptors, adverse outcome pathways and their effects. The topics of keynote speeches included innovation, sustainability of our health and environment, environmental pollutants and our health.

ERGO Coordinator Henrik Holbech (SDU) presenting ERGO at SETAC Europe 2019 in Helsinki, Finland.

Presentations from ERGO partners included ERGO Coordinator, Henrik Holbech, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), who presented on the project with a presentation entitled ‘Breaking down the wall between human health and environmental testing of endocrine disrupters EndocRine Guideline Optimisation (ERGO)’. Henrik and John Green also led a training course TC03 on statistical issues within ecotoxicology research. WP3 leader, Dries Knapen, University of Antwerp (UA) presented a poster entitled: ‘Toward an AOP-based tiered testing strategy for thyroid hormone disruption in fish’ and WP5 leader, Lisa Baumann, University of Heidelberg (UHEI) presented ‘Thyroid disruptors interfere with eye development and function in zebrafish’ and ‘Interference of hepatotoxicity with endocrine activity in fish’.

ERGO Coordinator Henrik Holbech presenting EURION at SETAC Europe 2019 in Helsinki, Finland.

A meeting of the Endocrine Disrupter Testing and Risk Assessment (EDTRA) Interest Group was also held, co-chaired by ERGO partner, Lisa Baumann (UHEI), with over 60 SETAC members attending the meeting. During the meeting, ERGO Coordinator Henrik (SDU) presented ‘The New EURION Cluster of Eight Recently Launched EU H2020 Projects on Endocrine Disruption’, which is the largest funding allocation of EDC research in Europe.

SETAC Europe brings together about 2,600 participants from around 60 countries, with over 60 exhibition booths. The next SETAC Europe 30th Annual Meeting will take place 3-7 May 2020 in Dublin, Ireland with the theme ‘Open Science for Enhanced Global Environmental Protection’.

For more information on SETAC Helsinki please visit: http://helsinki.setac.org/

For more information on SETAC Dublin please visit: https://dublin.setac.org/