Martin Scheringer reminded participants that Ivan Holoubek also contributed to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution, which was approved this year in Punta del Este, Uruguay, after years of effort. Other speakers also recalled their collaboration with him. In addition to Martin Scheringer, RECETOX was represented in this section by Jana Klánová and Jiří Kalina. Jiří Kalina summarized the center’s contribution to global monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the Stockholm Convention by presenting long-term air pollution trends across several continents, based on 20 years of data from MONET monitoring networks. Jana Klánová spoke about the need to make research data on chemical exposures accessible for decision-making processes and highlighted the role of the GENASIS (www.genasis.cz) and GMP (www.pops-gmp.org) information systems developed by RECETOX for this purpose. She also mentioned the 20-year history of the RECETOX International Summer School, which has significantly contributed to building expertise in all regions. Hundreds of young scientists have attended the summer school over the past two decades, and many referred to this experience during the conference. It is clear that the event has earned a strong reputation and helps promote the center and the university internationally.
In the following section, Jana Klánová presented current international efforts to build research capacities for implementing the ambitious concept of the human exposome and creating global partnerships. She spoke about the European partnership for chemical risk assessment (PARC) under Horizon Europe, as well as European (EHEN) and international (IHEN) networks for exposome research, and explained how building the EIRENE research infrastructure will strengthen synergies, eliminate fragmentation and duplication, and ensure long-term sustainability of capacities, data, and tools developed in these projects. She also emphasized EIRENE’s global ambition and its active international collaboration, particularly with the NEXUS exposome research network in the USA.
