Status, implications and challenges of European safe and sustainable by design paradigms applicable to nanomaterials and advanced materials

Abstract

Current European (EU) policies, such as the Green Deal, envisage safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) practices for the management of chemicals, which cogently entail nanomaterials (NMs) and advanced materials (AdMa).

The nanosafety assessment of ENMs under a dermal exposure scenario: from key molecular events toin silicomodeling tools

“…142,145 Also, the EU commission funded the establishment of data management research e-infrastructure (NanoCommons) and two research projects (NanoInformaTIX and NanoSolveIT) to facilitate mutual data sharing and to develop predictive tools for the grouping and risk assessment of ENMs. 146 In 2016, the FAIR principles, as a basis for data sharing, were published, aiming to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of scientific data. 147 Despite the enormous progress during the past decade, the currently available nanotoxicity databases and their applications in nanosafety prediction are still nascent.…”

Advanced materials earliest assessment (AMEA)

“…Several recent reports support our position thatpartially due to EU funding policycurrent approaches to the AdMa field over-represent nano-enabled AdMa, especially those for the health sector, with too few approaches for the chemical space of AdMa in general, or alloys, or polymers, or biotechnology. 13,83 Some approaches focused entirely on the sub-topic of "smart nanomaterials", which they understand as stimuli-responsive nanomaterials, which are currently emerging for uses in food, food packaging, cosmetics and agriculture. These materials are consistent with the "active materials" class in DAMADEI and MatSEEC schemes, due to the stimuli-responsiveness.…”

From principles to reality. FAIR implementation in the nanosafety community

“…Nanoscience has a key role in the achievement of green and sustainable policy goals, in the EU and globally [1][2][3]. The possibility of producing tailor-made nanomaterials (NMs) with exceptional characteristics promises significant contributions to societally relevant innovations.…”

“…Today, NMs already have a broad range of applications in green technology, food safety, medicine, cosmetics, agriculture, etc. [1][2][3]. Progress in the field, towards increasingly advanced materials (AdMa, as described recently [3][4][5]), depends on the analysis and modelling of large experimental and/or computational (simulated) datasets which predict the NMs' functionalities, behaviors and effects in complex environments [6].…”