Position paper on management of personal data in environment and health research in Europe.

Management of datasets that include health information and other sensitive personal information of European study participants has to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Regulation (EU) 2016/679). Within scientific research, the widely subscribed'FAIR' data principles should apply, meaning that research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. Balancing the aim of open science driven FAIR data management with GDPR compliant personal data protection safeguards is now a common challenge for many research projects dealing with (sensitive) personal data. In December 2020 a workshop was held with representatives of several large EU research consortia and of the European Commission to reflect on how to apply the FAIR data principles for environment and health research (E&H). Several recent data intensive EU funded E&H research projects face this challenge and work intensively towards developing solutions to access, exchange, store, handle, share, process and use such sensitive personal data, with the aim to support European and transnational collaborations. As a result, several recommendations, opportunities and current limitations were formulated. New technical developments such as federated data management and analysis systems, machine learning together with advanced search software, harmonized ontologies and data quality standards should in principle facilitate the FAIRification of data. To address ethical, legal, political and financial obstacles to the wider re-use of data for research purposes, both specific expertise and underpinning infrastructure are needed. There is a need for the E&H research data to find their place in the European Open Science Cloud. Communities using health and population data, environmental data and other publicly available data have to interconnect and synergize. To maximize the use and re-use of environment and health data, a dedicated supporting European infrastructure effort, such as the EIRENE research infrastructure within the ESFRI roadmap 2021, is needed that would interact with existing infrastructures.

Alternative air-liquid interface method for inhalation toxicity testing of a petroleum-derived substance.

In vitro-based new approach methodologies (NAMs) provide a pragmatic solution to animal testing of petroleum substances and their constituents. A previous study exposed an in vitro model (A549 cells) at the air-liquid interface (ALI) to assess inhalation toxicity of a single compound, ethylbenzene. Experimental conditions using VITROCELLⓇ 24/48 exposure system were optimized to achieve a deposition efficiency that resulted in dose-dependent biological changes. The feasibility of this set-up was evaluated for testing the complex substance gasoline, which, at only high concentrations, can induce mild respiratory irritation in animals and cough in humans.•Results showed that perpendicular ALI exposure flow systems (VITROCELL® 6/4 and 24/48) may not be appropriate for testing gasoline because it was not possible to achieve enough deposition onto the cells and in the culture medium to measure dose and to determine dose-dependent biological changes (more information can be found in 'Supplementary material and/or Additional information' section).•Structural features (e.g. aromatic or saturated hydrocarbon structure) and high hydrophobicity, together with the low concentrations of individual components in gasoline, may have caused the low deposition.•To achieve a higher deposition on the cells, A549 cells were exposed to gasoline at the ALI by passive dosing.The results demonstrate that the presented methodology is a promising NAM for inhalation toxicity testing of (semi-)volatile complex substances with low aqueous solubility.