Recognising the need for mixture risk assessment, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and RIVM collaborate under a Framework Partnership Agreement to enhance the MCRA software for scientifically-sound, up-to-date, transparent and user-friendly mixture risk assessment. Moreover, MCRA was and is being developed in multiple projects, including national and EU European Union (European Union ) funded projects such as ACROPOLIS, EuroMix, FNS-Cloud and PARC. MCRA is continuously being connected with recent data sources and other models to ensure up-to-date assessments. To date, more than 50 modules are available to address all major areas of risk assessment, including hazard assessment, exposure assessment and risk assessment.  

Under the Framework Partnership Agreement between EFSA and RIVM, a pilot study was used to test the MCRA software tool for carrying out exposure assessments of multiple pesticides and the findings were published in 2016. Thereafter, in 2020, a data model was proposed and published for probabilistic cumulative dietary exposure assessments of pesticides. In 2019, EFSA and RIVM, using the MCRA software, conducted a cumulative dietary exposure assessment of pesticides that have acute effects on the nervous system. A report was published in 2023 describing the standard regulatory action for retrospective cumulative risk assessment of pesticides in MCRA, and in addition, another report was published regarding the governance, user guidance and FAIRification of the MCRA software. Then in 2024, reports describing the update of the MCRA platform and the update of the standard regulatory actions for retrospective and prospective cumulative risk assessment of pesticides in MCRA.

The EFSA-RIVM partnership is directed at making the MCRA software accessible to all European countries and stakeholders that work on the safety assessment of pesticides. Working towards this, in 2024, EFSA and RIVM have hosted several online and in-person trainings for relevant stakeholders (national authorities and EFSA staff) regarding the following topics: 1) Beginner - Retrospective Cumulative Risk Assessment; 2) Advanced - Retrospective Cumulative Risk Assessment; and 3) Prospective Cumulative Risk Assessment.

The trainings will be continued in the future to further enhance the engagement of European stakeholders with the MCRA software and enhance awareness of its possibilities for cumulative risk assessment.

Overall, through several partnerships, the MCRA software is being used to advance and refine future risk assessment of chemicals. One important project is PARC which is the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals. In PARC, the MCRA software is being used to perform mixture risk assessment based on human biomonitoring data in a probabilistic way. Several PARC news items are available which describe the progress of this project thus far.