Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships Guidance Document

Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pesticide Programs (U.S. EPA/OPP) have cooperated on the development of a guidance document on the use of Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships [(Q)SAR] for pesticide risk assessors. This document has been developed under a North American Free Trade Agreement Technical Working Group (NAFTA TWG) project, 21st Century Toxicology: Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment.

The NAFTA TWG (Q)SAR Guidance Document provides an introduction to (Q)SAR and a flexible framework to assist with problem formulation for (Q)SAR, assessing the adequacy of predictions, and incorporating predictions into weight of evidence based assessments of pesticides. While the (Q)SAR Guidance Document was not designed to be a step-by-step manual, it provides useful guidance to evaluators who are reviewing predictions included in pesticide submissions or who are using (Q)SAR to help identify additional data requirements for pesticides, metabolites or degradates. Moreover, it also supplements, but does not replace, existing (Q)SAR guidance documents from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Chemicals Bureau, and other agencies.

The NAFTA TWG (Q)SAR Guidance Document is currently available for download from the U.S. EPA website.

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