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Nanomaterials safety assessment toolbox

Scientists from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) have produced an inventory of publicly available tools for the safety assessment of nanomaterials. The NANoREG Toolbox covers an unprecedented range of over 500 tools, developed in Europe and internationally.

According to the JRC, the EU funded NANoREG project made an extensive inventory of publicly available, ready-to-use tools for nanomaterial safety assessment. This inventory, the NANoREG Toolbox, was first published last year in the JRC Data Catalogue as a freely accessible Microsoft Excel®-based dataset. JRC scientists have now also published a scientific article describing the NANoREG Toolbox and analysing its content. The dataset describes and locates more than 500 tools for various assessment tasks, an unprecedented effort in identifying tools for nanomaterial safety assessment.

Background

The European chemicals legislation REACH requires an assessment of the safety of nanomaterials to our health and the environment. This poses challenges because some of the tools needed for assessing their safety do not yet exist or are still in development.

The JRC therefore encourages the use of the NANoREG Toolbox internationally and hopes that it will be used as a basis to support the global risk governance of nanotechnologies.