An overview of hazard and risk assessment of the OECD high production volume chemical category—Long chain alcohols [C 6 –C 22 ] (LCOH) ,$, $$ Hans Sanderson a,Ã , Scott E. Belanger b , Peter R. Fisk c , Christoph Scha ¨ fers d , Gauke Veenstra e , Allen M. Nielsen f , Yutaka Kasai g , Andreas Willing h , Scott D. Dyer b , Kathleen Stanton a , Richard Sedlak a a The Soap and Detergent Association, Washington, District of Columbia, DC 20005, USA b The Procter & Gamble Company, Central Product Safety, Miami Valley Innovation Center, P.O. Box 538707, Cincinnati, OH 45253-8707, USA c Peter Fisk Associates, 39 Bennell’s Avenue, Tankerton, Whitstable, Kent, UK CT5 2HP, UK d Fraunhofer-Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME), P.O. Box 1260, Schmallenberg 57377, Germany e Shell International B.V., P.O. Box 162, 2501 AN The Hague, The Netherlands f Sasol North America, Research and Development Department, Westlake LA, USA g Kao Corporation, 2-1-3 Bunka, Sumida-ku, Tokyo 131-8501, Japan h Cognis GmbH, Henkelstrasse 67, D-40551 Du ¨sseldorf, Germany article info Article history: Received 1 April 2008 Received in revised form 10 October 2008 Accepted 11 October 2008 Keywords: Risk assessment Long chain alcohols LCOH Chemical category High production volume chemical Human health International chemical safety programs abstract This review summarizes the findings of the assessment report for the category, long chain alcohols (LCOH) with a carbon chain length range of C 6 –C 22 covering 30 substances, and 41.5 million tonnes/ year consumed globally. The category was evaluated under the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) high production volume chemicals program in 2006. The main findings of the assessment include: (1) no unacceptable human or environmental risks were identified; (2) these materials are rapidly and readily biodegradable; (3) a parabolic relationship was demonstrated between carbon chain length and acute and chronic aquatic toxicity; (4) category-specific (quantitative) structure-activity relationships were developed enabling prediction of properties across the entire category; (5) LCOH occur naturally in the environment in an equilibrium between synthesis and degradation; (6) industry coming together and sharing resources results in minimizing the need for additional animal tests, produces cost savings, and increases scientific quality of the assessment. & 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to summarize and introduce the assessment of the long chained alcohols (LCOH) category, and also to give a brief review of ongoing national and international assessment frameworks addressing non-assessed or high produc- tion volume (HPV) chemicals. Most HPV chemicals have been on the market for decades but rarely have comprehensive data sets on their physicochemical and toxicological properties been publicly available. Therefore HPV chemicals are under increasing regulatory scrutiny globally. In 1990, member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) decided to undertake the investigation of HPV chemicals in a co-operative way. These HPV chemicals include all chemicals reported to be produced or imported at levels greater than 1000 tonnes/year in at least one member country or in the European Union region. The most recent OECD HPV Chemicals List compiled in 2004 contains 4843 substances based on submissions of nine national inventories and that of the European Union. The OECD HPV program proceeds by the agreement that member countries will co-operatively select the chemicals to be investi- gated, collect and characterize effects and exposure information from government and public sources and encourage industry to provide information from their files, complete the agreed dossier for the Screening Information Data Set (SIDS), and make an initial assessment of the potential hazard of each chemical investigated. When a full SIDS dossier on a chemical is available, an initial assessment of the information is undertaken and conclusions are ARTICLE IN PRESS Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoenv Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 0147-6513/$ - see front matter & 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2008.10.006 $ Funding sources and experimental guidelines: This work was funded by the ICCA (International Council of Chemical Associations)/SDA (The Soap and Detergent Association) Aliphatic Alcohols Consortium. $$ Any studies referred to in this overview article were conducted in accordance to national and/or international guidelines for protection of human subjects and animal welfare. For further details see papers in this issue by: Fisk et al. (2008); Scha ¨fers et al. (2008); Veenstra et al. (2008); and Belanger et al. (2008). Ã Corresponding author. Current address: National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark, P.O. Box 358, Frederiksborgvej 399, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark. Fax: +145 46301114. E-mail address: hasa@dmu.dk (H. Sanderson). Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] Please cite this article as: Sanderson, H., et al., An overview of hazard and risk assessment of the OECD high production volume chemical category—Long chain alcohols [C 6 –C 22 ] (LCOH) , . Ecotoxicol. Environ. Saf. (2008), doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2008.10.006