Nicholas Ball

Nicholas Ball is a senior toxicologist and Senior EH&S Expertise Improvement Manager at the Dow Chemical Company with over 20 years of experience in the field of regulatory toxicology (both government and the chemical industry). During his career in Dow, he has provided regulatory toxicology support for several Dow business units and is actively engaged today in delivering global regulatory compliance.

He is the Chairman of the CEFIC Evaluation Network of Experts, and a member of several other CEFIC working groups (REACH IT and Processes NoE, Human Health NoE). He represents Dow on the board of ECETOC and has led and contributed to several ECETOC task forces (Exposure based adaptations, Read-across, Polymer safety assessment, and the Human Health Transformational program core team).

He is currently working with colleagues across industry to improve regulatory dossier quality, leading an external Industry and regulatory working group to set up a global data sharing system and guidance, and leading a team to prepare all Dow businesses for the upcoming Polymer REACH requirements.

As a toxicologist in Dow he has been actively engaged in scientific research and has published on several topics including read-across, exposure adaptations, mutagenicity assessments, skin sensitisation potential, and co-authored book chapters on reproductive and developmental toxicity testing and the use of cheminformatics tools to predict toxicity.

Within Dow he has held several leadership positions including as group leader of the Cellular and Molecular Toxicology team in the US and most recently as a Global Toxicology consultant team leader for the EMEAI and AP (and some US) toxicology consultants.

NextGen Basel 1

NAMS and Practical Industrial Risk Assessment, Nicholas Ball (Dow Chemical)

This talk will provide a brief introduction to Dow and highlight how NAMs are being used today, covering the different use cases and the types of tools used. The main uses cases are supporting our Research and Development in identifying new substances, internal safety assessments of products and regulatory compliance. The extent to which we are able to deploy NAMS against these use cases will be discussed. The impact of sustainability and increasing chemical regulatory measures on how we use NAMS will be used to illustrate the overall direction we are taking. As we see more substances being identified as ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ in the EU and the continued focus on reducing hazard we are facing more and more situations where we must replace key chemistries in our portfolio (whether they are raw materials, processing aids or final products). NAMS can play a key role in this activity, and this will be discussed. Finally, the main challenges/barriers to the use of NAMS will be presented along with what we see as opportunities for the near future and longer term.