Abstract
The aim of this article is to present an overview of salient issues of exposure, characterisation and hazard assessment of nanomaterials as they emerged from the consensus-building of experts undertaken within the four year European Commission coordination project NanoImpactNet. The approach adopted is to consolidate and condense the findings and problem-identification in such a way as to identify knowledge-gaps and generate a set of interim recommendations of use to industry, regulators, research bodies and funders. The categories of recommendation arising from the consensual view address: significant gaps in vital factual knowledge of exposure, characterisation and hazards; the development, dissemination and standardisation of appropriate laboratory protocols; address a wide range of technical issues in establishing an adequate risk assessment platform; the more efficient and coordinated gathering of basic data; greater inter-organisational cooperation; regulatory harmonization; the wider use of the life-cycle approaches; and the wider involvement of all stakeholders in the discussion and solution-finding efforts for nanosafety.
Highlights
The question of the safety of nanomaterials (NMs) is one of increasing urgency as these materials enter into a wider and wider range of manufacturing processes, industrial and consumer goods and waste management processes (See the nanoproducts inventories [1])
The issue of exposure metrics has extensively been addressed by Maynard and Aitken [21], and they conclude that effective approaches for measuring exposure to a wide range of manufactured NMs/nano-objects will require methods for measuring aerosol number, surface area and mass concentration
This study provided the first comprehensive assessment of the potential concentrations and the associated environmental risks of nano-TiO2, nano-Ag and carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
Summary
The question of the safety of nanomaterials (NMs) is one of increasing urgency as these materials enter into a wider and wider range of manufacturing processes, industrial and consumer goods and waste management processes (See the nanoproducts inventories [1]). At the close of the project, these findings were consolidated into a consensus report and a set of recommendations tailored for the different stakeholder groups of relevance for nanosafety, including industry, funding agencies and the research community [3], which is summarised in this article This view is an attempt to bring together the diverse findings, conclusions and opinions of a large number and variety of specialists working in many different disciplines related directly or indirectly to the environmental, health and safety aspects of NMs. Included are chemists, biologists, material scientists, physicists, toxicologists, occupational health experts, environment and ecology specialists as well as those working in regulation, insurance, technology communication and standardisation. Disagreement was to be expected within this emergent community, the authors suggest that an overall narrative appears, as outlined in this article [3]
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