Risk Assessment Strategies, Toxicity Testing and Policy Aspects of Nanomaterials

Background/Objectives: Nanomaterials possess unique properties, but the way they were designed may cause adverse effects. These adverse effects are issues for the establishment of regulatory frameworks for their safe use.

Materials and Methods: Nanostructures able to interact with biological molecules via several mechanisms. However, the dramatic benefits of their applications lately create a potential safety concern of their possible effects on human healthand environment. These potential harms that may follow, lead to the need of a hazard assessment procedure to determine the safety of nanomaterials. Therefore, two main approaches have been designed: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and chemical Risk Assessment (RA).

Findings: The Risk assessment/Risk management framework developed by the U.S. National Research Council consists of three components: research, risk assessment and risk management. The aim of this framework is to collect data in order to determine whether an agent has a potential to cause adverse effect, to define the dose-response relationship, exposure status and the probability of an exposure event in a population at current exposure levels. However, current regulatory frameworks are not designed to address nanotechnology research and the progress of risk assessment research of nanomaterials, because new nanoproducts are arriving on the market rapidly. Therefore, the current knowledge about the nanomaterials on the market is insufficient, leading to lack of risk assessment data that can be used to develop any kind of regulation.

Application/Improvements: Toxicity testing is insufficient to reduce the adverse effects of nanomaterials. Tiered risk management strategy is one of the key steps in establishing a control limit for these unwanted effects.