>
Spotlight March 2022: Safe Materials from Scratch – Safe-by-Design-Concept in action
In recent decades, German research on nanomaterials and new, innovative materials has been widely expanded by material safety aspects. European initiatives also pay significant attention to this: both the European Union (EU) Green Deal, and the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) aim to create a sustainable, climate-neutral economy with sustainable and safe chemicals and products, while better protecting human health and the environment. The focus is on fostering innovation while addressing global challenges.
The Safe-by-Design (SbD) strategy for nanomaterials and innovative materials is one approach to address precisely these challenges (see also Spotlight Research of November 2021). Risks to humans and the environment should ideally be identified, assessed, and reduced on an early stage of the development process. The European Horizon 2020 project NanoRegII also deals with safe-by-design and is the first project that has now conducted a practical test of the safe-by-design concept. The NanoRegII safe-by-design strategy was implemented at six companies. The experience gained was then evaluated and guidelines for practical implementation of the safe-by-design strategy for the future were developed. In addition to being informative, the guidelines also contain several tools that are intended to help identify risks at an early stage. This should enable an assessment at each step in the innovation process as to whether the innovation should be continued and, if so, which safe-by-design measures need to be further applied to reduce uncertainties. The guidelines thus offer a first approach that can be adapted by each company to its specific requirements for innovation.
Original Publication:
Sánchez Jiménez, A. et al 2022 Safe(r) by design guidelines for the nanotechnology industry. NanoImpact 25, 100385.
Weitere Spotlights
Spotlight March 2023: How can photovoltaics be made safe and sustainable?
Conventional photovoltaic systems often have only low efficiency, i.e. only a fraction of the solar energy is converted into electrical energy and made usable. For this reason, research is being conducted into innovative materials that can significantly increase the energy yield and thus also enable more electrical energy to be generated from renewable sources. However, […]
Read moreSpotlight October 2020: Nanosafety – Topic of the Future
Research on nanosafety is a driver of innovation as the spotlight in July has demonstrated. But furthermore, this research field is built on routine as well if researchers look for the “needle in the haystack”. In many areas the safety research initiates the development of new methods, e.g. for the determination of nanoparticles within exposed organisms via […]
Read moreSpotlight June 2021: Endotoxin – the reason for false-positive toxicity testing for advanced materials?
Advanced materials, but also nanomaterials are closely examined to determine whether they trigger biological effects that could be harmful to humans and the environment before they are used in products. This also includes such materials as titanium dioxide, which has been used in a wide variety of products for more than 50 years. A particularly […]
Read moreSpotlight September: A methodology for the automatic evaluation of data quality and completeness of nanomaterials for risk assessment purposes
This paper describes a method for automatically assessing the quality and completeness of nanosafety data for the purpose of risk assessment. Steps to develop the methodology for assessing data completeness and the methodology for assessing quality are presented. The methodology is tailored to physicochemical and hazard (meta) data, but can also be configured with appropriate […]
Read more