SETAC North America Global Soils Advisory Group
SETAC North American 36th Annual Meeting
Tuesday November 3, 2015
6:30 – 7:30 PM
Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Minutes prepared by Theresa Phillips and Ming Fan
1) Welcome from Meeting Chair – Mike Simini and brief introductions
2)
Acceptance of the previous year’s meeting minutes
 Andy moved to accept 2014 Minutes with one revision: With regards to nominees
needed, change the following wording: “someone else from industry” to “additional
nominees”.
 Seconded by Theresa
3) Update on soil-related activities in North America
 Leana Vandervliet - Juliska Princz and Rick Scroggins attended meeting in Europe.
Environment Canada is developing a Standard test method for the Oribatid mite; a round
robin is underway with several labs participating; method is for testing long term
exposure with survival and reproduction as the endpoints.
 Yvette Lowney – The Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council (ITRC) is currently
implementing a project to produce an instructing document on bioavailability of soil
contaminants for use in Human Health Risk Assessment guidance for regulators.
 Hunter Anderson - USAF starting campaign for Preliminary Assessments (PAs) for Triple
F release locations; lots of sludge application sites; PHCs, PFOS etc.
 Ming Fan: a good understanding of sludge application and practices is critical for soil risk
assessment. There is some literature available for NA and Europe but very limited for
‘emerging economy’ countries, such as China. A literature search was performed that
found big differences between countries in sludge re-use.
 Roman Kuperman. – As a followup to site-specific metals criteria derived using SSDs,
the method is now being applied to explosives.
 Ron Checkai - also doing a followup to this but with pesticides. See Wednesdays
“Military” session. Discussion of growing interest in ecotoxicology of munitions
compounds, specifically “insensitive” compounds.
 Ping Gong – Insensitive compound replacement program aims to be as green as
possible.
4) Update on soil-related activities in Other Geographic Units

Dragan Jevtic – October 7-8 in Helsinki: 2-day ‘The Topical Scientific Workshop
on Soil Risk Assessment Workshop’ held by European Chemicals Agency
(ECHA) in cooperation with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) aim to
foster discussions among academia, regulators, industry and other stakeholders
on the possible regulatory impacts that the latest scientific developments may
have. Plenaries will be recorded.

Ron – National Committee for Soil Science/ National Academy of Science: Conference
to celebrate International Year of Soil, Vienna, December 7 – Register by November 15.
5) GSAG NA sponsored the following platform and poster sessions:
 Soil AG session (Soil Contaminants: Fate, Bioavailability, Ecotoxicology, and Risk
Assessment)
 Military session (Fate, Toxicology and Risk Assessment of Materials of Interest to the
Military)
6) Steering Committee status – Nominees and Elections
 Elections weren’t held last year, there are 2 openings - Submit Nominations/ Bio
ASAP; Bruce will set up Survey Monkey or something similar, if more than 2
nominees. Nominees are Theresa Phillips, Natalie Feisthauer, and Hunter Anderson
 To be a member of GSAG an individual must join on SETAC website.
7) Ideas for Next Year – World Congress, Orlando
 Call for sessions will be 1-2 months from now.
 SETAC is doing Horizon Scanning for high priority topics, hoping for preliminary
listing after Nov. 4 meeting; recommended that submissions try to address those for
better chances of acceptance; will be competitive.
 Advisable to coordinate with European counterparts and/or other geographics, better
in a global context due to World Congress Conference.
 SETAC guarantees AGs one session.
 Also advisable to think of “spotlight” sessions; debates; round tables etc.
 Mike volunteered to get in touch with other Regions to see what ideas people have.
8) Dinner at Caffe Molise
The members convened with David Montgomery, keynote speaker for Tuesday at
SETAC NA, for informal discussions related to soils.
ATTENDANCE
Attendance Sheet