Abstract
A momentum toward risk assessment and management of chemical substances is gathering strength with the enforcement of REACH in EU countries and the revision of KASHINHOU in Japan. The problem of lack of ecotoxicity data of chemical substance which is indispensable to ecological risk assessment thereby become an urgent issue. However, expense of toxicity test of chemical substance (in vivo or in vitro) is expensive, and an effort to reduce use of test animals in the toxicity test from the viewpoint of animal welfare is demanded. Under the situation, researches on in silico technique development to quantitatively estimate the toxicity of chemical substance based on test data and knowledge accumulated in the past, become very active in recent years. This study aims at providing an overview of current situation and challenge in technique development for predicting ecotoxicity of chemical substance. The strengths and limitations of current existing techniques especially focused on the ECOSAR, the KATE, and the OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox were evaluated firstly, and then the current challenges in technique development were discussed and concluded.
