To support the Chemicals Management Plan under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), Health Canada sought expert peer consultation for a draft screening assessment report (DSAR) evaluating 47 inorganic substances identified as priorities. The client required independent scientific and technical expertise to assess whether the report’s conclusions—particularly regarding health effects, exposure pathways, and risk characterizations—were sound, complete, and defensible.

To support the evaluation of a new veterinary pharmaceutical product intended for use in bovines, a scientific review was requested of submitted toxicological data related to the active compound LY488756. This compound, proposed under the product name Experior, had been advanced for registration based on its claimed selective action on β3-adrenergic receptors and a lack of mutagenic, carcinogenic, or teratogenic effects. Given its potential entry into the human food supply via meat residues, an independent expert analysis of the submission was deemed necessary to determine its safety.

The project centered on supporting the development of a methodology that could eventually be implemented as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) process. The objective was to help formalize and potentially automate how professional judgment is applied when determining the risk significance of non-compliant findings within the Canadian nuclear regulatory framework. Specifically, the…

A large number of domestic and foreign animal diseases with zoonotic health impacts to humans must be managed carefully to prevent disease transmission and spread. Risk management decisions often involve the comparison of different types of risk and the cost-effectiveness of different control measures for reducing risk. This requires that different types of risk be assessed in a consistent manner to allow cross-comparisons. The use of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) as a measure of the burden of human disease from domestic and foreign animal pathogens was completed for several zoonoses in Canada.

To support national public health goals, RSI was tasked with developing a quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) model to estimate the human health risks associated with the consumption of chicken in New Zealand. The core objective was to quantify the relationship between Campylobacter contamination on poultry carcasses at the point of chilling and the subsequent incidence of foodborne illness among consumers.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, with Health Canada, wanted to understand perceptions of the health risks from smoke from wildfires and from residential burning (winter heating using wood stoves, and fireplaces), and public health communication approaches and messages used in these contexts. This information would support revisions of the health messages used in the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI). The AQHI expresses the health risk associated with three common urban air pollutants, and is calculated at monitoring stations in communities across Canada to inform the public of the risk level of current local air quality conditions.

To support regulatory decision-making, a comprehensive risk assessment was conducted to evaluate how varying lethality performance standards would impact the public health burden of salmonellosis associated with Ready-to-Eat (RTE) meat and poultry products. The primary objective was to quantify the expected number of cases of illness under different reductions in Salmonella presence across a broad spectrum of RTE product categories.