RHP Risk Management Helps Companies Navigate New Toxicology Methods

RHP Risk Management, a company specializing in toxicology risk assessment, is helping organizations navigate the shift towards new approach methodologies (NAMs) in toxicology and regulatory risk assessment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has expanded its acceptance of NAMs, including in vitro systems, computational models, read-across, omics technologies, and integrated testing strategies, to support defensible regulatory and risk-management decisions.

The EPA’s actions, announced in June 2026, aim to reduce and eventually eliminate mammalian animal testing. This move reflects a broader trend towards more human-relevant testing approaches that can provide mechanistically informative evidence. RHP Risk Management assists companies in evaluating the suitability of these new methods to address data gaps, strengthen risk assessments, and support regulatory decision-making.

According to Melanie Buser, PhD, DABT, a Senior Associate Health Scientist at RHP Risk Management, "NAMs are changing the questions toxicologists can answer and the evidence available to answer them. But replacing an animal study with a new technology does not automatically produce a better risk assessment. The key is selecting methods that are fit for purpose, integrating them with exposure information and the existing toxicological evidence, and building a weight of evidence that can support the regulatory or business decision at hand."

RHP Risk Management offers a range of services to help organizations integrate NAMs with traditional toxicological, exposure, and human-health evidence. These services include addressing toxicity data gaps for chemicals with limited traditional data, evaluating read-across and analogue suitability, integrating computational predictions, in vitro results, and existing animal or human evidence, prioritizing substances or endpoints for additional testing, evaluating whether available evidence can support a regulatory submission or risk assessment, and characterizing uncertainty to determine whether additional testing would materially change the decision.

The firm closely tracks evolving federal and state regulatory expectations and brings experience interpreting how agency policy and scientific practice translate into real-world decision-making. As regulators expand their consideration of NAM-derived information, RHP helps clients assess both where these approaches are accepted today and how changing expectations may affect future regulatory strategies.

RHP Risk Management delivers science-driven solutions for workplace, product, and environmental health. The company specializes in exposure assessment, toxicology risk evaluation, and regulatory compliance support. With certified industrial hygienists, exposure scientists, toxicologists, and epidemiologists, RHP provides defensible opinions and quantitative analysis for complex environmental health questions.