It was suggested that these committees could receive each other's minutes. It was also suggested that joint meetings and cross-membership could be usefully pursued. Members agreed that the secretariat should identify potential ideas for a joint scientific meeting of all three committees. The Committee recalled that during the discussion on the COM guidelines members had identified risk assessment as a priority area of future work. The Committee was reminded that the COM adopted a precautionary approach, which assumed that there is no threshold of action for in-vivo mutagens.
Any exposure is considered to result in increased risk, although possibly very small.
The Committee has in the past recognised two exceptions to this generalisation relating to aneugenicity identification by tubulin inhibitors and the rapid detoxication of hydroquinone and phenol via the oral route. Some key papers from the EEMS 1998 symposium on threshold-mediated mechanisms in mutagenicity were made available to the Committee. The Committee agreed that it was important to base its discussion on chemicals rather than using the often quoted example of radiation. Members confirmed that the formation of DNA adducts represented a potential mutagenic hazard. In the absence of specific information on the conversion of a DNA adduct to a mutation, it had to be assumed that the formation of DNA adducts represented a potential mutagenic risk.