IMPLEMENTING INNOVATIVE METHODS FOR SAFETY AND SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENTS OF CHEMICALS AND MATERIALS PARTICULARLY AT NANO LEVEL IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) has been adopted, which aims to tackle the challenge of producing and using chemicals to address societal needs while respecting the planetary boundaries and safeguarding people and ecosystems, by dealing with pollution from all sources (EC, 2019 or COM(2019)640final, COM(2020)667 final, JRC report).

This CSS challenge gets operationalised through the development/implementation of two key R&I actions: 1) the Strategic Research and Innovation Plan (SRIP), and 2) the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework.

Consistent with the aims of the Call HORIZON-CL4-2023-RESILIENCE-01-21 and bearing in the mind the pressing need to develop new methods or improve current ones, to support the improvement of safety and sustainability assessments of chemicals, the project IMPLEMENTING INNOVATIVE METHODS FOR SAFETY AND SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENTS OF CHEMICALS AND MATERIALS PARTICULARLY AT NANO LEVEL IN THE EUROPEAN UNION (CheMatSustain) will not only study the quantum effects from a fundamental point-of-view (by DFT means) but also by identifying and measuring them through experimental techniques (high-resolution analysis, XPS and UPS), and determining the specific molecular recognition through their interaction with the environment, which is a quantum mechanical effect (in-vitro, microfluidic in-vitro, and in-vivo models and proteomics and transcriptomics and methods).

The obtained information on these descriptors will then be integrated for the development of novel in silico models for prediction (eco)toxicity properties of advanced materials.

Finally, in-silico model prediction results will be combined to develop a new methodology for the complementary use of Risk Assessment and LCA to improve criteria for the SSbD implementation framework. The work has been divided in eight work packages and the duration of the project is 48 months.