ITS-NANO Final Report Summary

ITS-NANO started in March 2012 with the aim to generate a research strategy that could lead in future to an Intelligent Testing Strategy for Nanomaterials in May 2013. The project had 9 partners from across Europe and was co-ordinated by Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh, UK. Thousands of engineered nanomaterials exist and new ones are being developed in many different forms for use in a wide array of commercial products. Nanomaterials demonstrate many interesting proprieties, due to their nanoscale, and can show complex behaviour compared to both their corresponding chemical compounds and macroscale materials. Therefore it is important to assess their potential risks to human and environmental health associated with their production, use and disposal.

As for conventional chemicals variables when assessing risk include the basic materials, products containing materials, routes of release (air, water etc.), target species, routes of exposure, target tissues/cells and measures of toxicity (endpoints). Unlike conventional chemicals nanomaterials are extremely difficult to group, they could exhibit non-linear effects, and extrapolation of risk is very difficult and prone to errors. For these reasons assessment of risk on a case-by-case basis is too costly and slow to allow sustainable development of nanotechnology. Therefore a more Intelligent Testing Strategy (ITS), which is effective, efficient but accurate, is required.

The ITS-NANO document outlines a vision that is a way forward in which there is a knowledge-based sustainable development of engineered NMs. The research priorities required to achieve this vision are outlined, stretching from the short term to distant future, during which time it is predicted that there will be a decreased reliance on testing and a gradual increase in reliance on modelling/grouping/ranking approaches. The modelling approaches are not limited to hazard, but also include exposure and physicochemical characterisation.