Integrative approach in a safe by design context combining risk, life cycle and socio-economic assessment for safer and sustainable nanomaterials

Abstract

Moving towards safe and sustainable innovations is an international policy ambition. In the on-hand manuscript, a concept combining safe by design and sustainability was implemented through the integration of human and environmental risk assessment, life cycle assessment as well as an assessment of the economic viability. The result is a nested and iterative process in form of a decision tree that integrates these three elements in order to achieve sustainable, safe and competitive materials, products or services. This approach, embedded into the stage-gate-model for safe by design, allows to reduce the uncertainty related to the assessment of risks and impacts by improving the quality of the data collected along each stage. In the second part of the manuscript, the application is shown for a case study dealing with the application of nanoparticles for Li-Ion batteries. One of the general conclusions out of this case study is that data gaps are a key aspect in view of the reliability of the results.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment (LCA); Nanomaterials; Risk assessment (RA); Safe by design; Socio-economic assessment (SEA).