Institut National de L'Environnement Industriel et des Risques (INERIS) is a large public research institute whose mission is to provide scientific and technical assistance to the French Ministry for the Environment. With a staff of 520 persons, INERIS has extensive facilities and competence in all aspects of risk assessment, including toxicology. INERIS has experience in managing large international projects, including from the EC: STSARCES on safety-related systems, completed in 2000, COPERNICUS ("Guide for fire and explosion protection of agro- and food industry"), ARAMIS "Accidental Risk Assessment Methodologies in Industries", ESD Programme, launched January 2002; ACUTEX on acute toxicity prevention, launched December 2002. INERIS also took part in two EC projects under the 4th Framework Programme: ASSURANCE (ENV4970627) and RASE (CT97-2169). It is one of the French organisations in charge of risk assessment for the E.C. (in particular under the Biocides directive) and provides expertise to the French Agency for Environmental Health Protection. INERIS is ISO 9001 accredited and has GLP certification for toxicology studies.
Within INERIS the Direction of Chronic Risks (DRC) focuses on exposure analysis and identification, hazard identification (for ecosystems and human health) and risk assessment. Areas of expertise include environmental chemistry, physico-chemical modelling, biostatistics and biomathematics, environmental epidemiology, economic analysis, toxicology and public health. All necessary resources are available to the investigators, including administrative support.
Céline Boudet, Scientific programme coordinator in the Toxicology Unit (Division of Chronic Risks) of INERIS, PhD, has coordinated and was involved in major national projects (environment and health national plan etc.) and also participated to European programmes (EXPOLIS, EXPOFACTS, SCALE etc.) in the area of environmental epidemiology, exposure and health risk assessment. She is consultant in regulatory risk assessment for the French Ministry of Environment and is engaged in various REACH projects. Philippe Hubert, DRC Director, Ingenieur Ecole Polytechnique, is an epidemiologist. He has been particularly involved in radiation epidemiology and decision analysis (pos-Chernobyl expertise and remediation). He now chairs the Chronic Risk Direction at INERIS. Frederic Y. Bois, Scientific Advisor to the DRC, PharmD, PhD, has extensive experience in quantitative risk assessment, toxicology and epidemiology. His research is funded by the US NIH, the French Ministry of Research, and the EC (ACUTEX, NANOSAFE II projects). Laurence Rouil, Research Scientist, PhD, is a specialist in fluid mechanics and focuses on atmospheric transport modelling. She heads the PREV'AIR project on online real-time forecasting of pollution at the national and European level.
Within INTARESE, INERIS will head WP 4.3 (Application and testing), contribute to the atmospheric modelling toolbox (WP 4.2), and will participate to the framing WPs (1.1, 1.5 and 4.1), as well as internal training (WP5.2).
