Innovation for Tomorrow: Key Takeaways from SETAC Europe 2025 

The conference began on the Sunday evening with a warm welcome featuring live music and a traditional Viennese waltz, and as always, a great first night of networking with old friends and colleagues. Throughout the week, the team engaged in a wide range of thought-provoking sessions, poster presentations, and discussions at exhibition stands exploring the current and upcoming challenges in environmental regulation. Now, a few weeks later, we’re excited to share some of our key technical highlights and takeaways from this week: 

• The Monday morning sessions covered some interesting updates for environmental fate: The new drinking water treatment guidance was on a few people’s minds, with refinement options explored for DT50, Koc and formation fraction endpoints. A monitoring study that investigated the likelihood of triggered metabolites being detected in groundwater found levels well below the 0.1 µg/L regulatory threshold. Updates on the new meta model SPOTMOD (which looks at precision spot applications) and the progress of the SDLM (Spatially Distributed Leaching Modelling) models were also provided. Whilst a free version of SPOTMOD will hopefully be available the in the coming months, there has not been much progress in the last year on the SDLM models and there is no timeline for when these will be submitted to EFSA. 

• The session on non-target arthropods (NTAs) raised some interesting points: Are the observed declines in insects more a result of habitat changes in the landscape (e.g. changes in crop choice) than from agricultural chemicals? TKTD models were successfully calibrated against standard laboratory T.pyri datasets and could be used to investigate DT50 values in leaves for understanding the changes in results between glass slide and natural substrates. 

• The session on non-target plants discussed the newly introduced visual injury endpoint to OECD test guidelines and how this should be reported. Quantifying change in visual appearance (chlorosis, necrosis, wilting, deformation etc.) is difficult, with little guidance from OECD and different scoring systems possible. These could range from grouping effects into effect classes or effect groups, or determining the percentage of plants affected, either per plant or within replicates. The speaker on this topic introduced how estimating 50% effect rates could be done using a decision tree. 

• View from the exhibition stand from Christina – a well-organised event with a bustling atmosphere! The booth stayed busy throughout, attracting strong interest and engaging conversations with our clients and peers, new connections and future partners eager to learn more about the company and our field of work. In short, a thoroughly enjoyable experience! 

This year marked our second time exhibiting with a stand. While we did miss the sunshine tucked away in the basement of the conference centre, having a dedicated space once again proved invaluable. It allowed us to connect with even more attendees and continue meaningful conversations sparked by our poster presentations. 

What makes SETAC truly special, in our opinion, is its unique ability to bring together scientists from academia, industry, consultancy, and regulatory bodies—fostering collaboration and dialogue that’s rarely matched at other conferences. We were honoured to be part of another fantastic SETAC Europe and are already looking forward to reconnecting with the community in Maastricht next year!