Lifecycle: Human exposure & environmental release

Objectives

(i) to develop the hypotheses, criteria and guiding principles on which grouping and read-across decisions can be made (O2); and (ii) to identify the tools (e.g. protocols, models) that allow these hypotheses to be tested or criteria/guiding principles to be delivered (O3).  The tool will be assembled into a novel ITS: Lifecycle: human exposure and environmental release.

WP2 will also work closely with industry to provide case studies of NMs, NFs and NEPs to WP3-5 that are relevant to a wide range of grouping scenarios to ensure development of a comprehensive Framework (Table 1.2). Some of those will be based on data-rich NMs from the projects SUN, NANODEFINE, NanoFASE and caLIBRAte (e.g. amorphous silica, organic pigment, CeO2), which will be complemented by more NFs of the same substances with different coatings, sizes, morphologies. For example, one morphology-defined case study will explore similarities of different HARN with several NFs of cellulose and Ag-wires. Moreover, new case studies will be developed, involving several NFs of Cd-based and Cd-free QDots, considering controlled-release capsules (e.g. nutrients or biocides, but not medicals). The materials represent real-world applications in short-term solid (packaging, textiles), long-term solid (paints, rubbers, plastics), and soft (food, cosmetics) matrices. They will be provided by the industrial partners BASF, AKZO and Unilever in representative applications/formulations, and will be used by WP1-5 to test the GRACIOUS Framework and software module and the underlying grouping and read-across strategies

List of tasks:

• Contribute to the overall GRACIOUS Framework design and refinement
• Provision of case-study NMs/NFs and NEPs
• Comprehensive analysis of release in scenarios covering all lifecycle stages of NEPs to identify criteria for grouping and guiding principles for read-across of NMs/NFs
• Create a project inventory of release and exposure data
• Identify release and exposure similarity hypothesis, criteria and tools to refine them
• Develop and refine the Lifecycle: Human exposure and environmental release ITS to test the hypotheses, criteria and tools in selected case studies
• Contribute tot he Framework Guidance Document

WP Leader: Socorro Vazquez, LEITAT