Scope Statement

There is an increasing understanding of the need to assess the fate and behaviour of nanomaterials at every stage of their lifecycle, from production through use in products (including wear and tear aspects) through final disposal of the product and potential release of the nanomaterials into the environment. This includes understanding of the potential points in the nanomaterial / nano-enabled product life cycle where exposure can occur (including for example degradation or wear particles that may be generated in situ, resulting in significantly higher concentrations than via indirect exposure, for example with particles generated from implants), estimation of the likely amounts of exposure and the number of people who will be exposed at each stage, and consideration also of potential for synergistic exposures to other potential toxicants as a consequence of the exposure / release / transformation cycles.

Aspects to be addressed here include release processes from production, product use to end of life; occupational exposure, consumer exposure and environmental exposure; consideration of how materials might be modified / transformed in products, how and where products might subsequently degrade etc. Nanomaterials characterization at every stage of the life cycle is essential to understand what exactly is being released and what transformation the nanomaterials undergo that might affect their partitioning and biomodification, the accumulation in environmental sinks etc. Critically the final surface may be completely different to initial one with significant effects for toxicity. Similarly, the size of the released nanomaterials may be totally different to that initially added to a product. Furthermore, all information may be combined in a model to allow predictions of exposure levels for different scenarios and enable to test clustering of nanomaterials. These basic research efforts have to be backed up by harmonisation and standardisation activities.