How to Build a Polymer Grouping Hypothesis: Template Design and Data Integration

Polymers are widely used across numerous industries, including medical, packaging, automotive, and electronics, making them essential to modern life. However, their extensive structural diversity, complex degradation behaviour, limited availability of toxicity data, and variability in manufacturing processes present significant challenges for hazard assessment. Evaluating each polymer individually using conventional toxicity testing is impractical, highlighting the need for more efficient and standardised assessment approaches.

Grouping offers a solution by streamlining hazard assessment through the identification of similarities between substances, enabling the read-across (shared) of hazard data from one group member (data rich) to another (data poor). This presentation introduces a novel strategy that builds upon the existing GRACIOUS grouping framework developed within an EU project, adapting it by replacing nano-specific elements with polymer-specific considerations.

A structured template for data collection is proposed, outlining how to assess the reliability of toxicological data and how to use these data to build a robust polymer grouping hypothesis. The adapted framework integrates the purpose of grouping with polymer life-cycle aspects, addressing the key questions of “what they are”, “where they go”, and “what they do”.