A proposed method for assembly and interpretation of short-term test data.

The genetic toxicology databases for chemicals that have been tested extensively are generally composed of inconsistent responses from a diverse set of assays. Consequently, difficulties arise when the data are evaluated for classifying the agent or for assessing the chemical's hazard potential. Several years ago, the International Commission for Protection against Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens (ICPEMC) established a committee to construct a process for compiling and interpreting diverse data sets. The Committee has developed a weight-of-evidence approach that combines test data into a series of scores for test type, class, family, and a consensus score defining the relative mutagenic activity of the agent compared with other chemicals in the database. This report describes the method and preliminary results from 113 chemicals.