Assessing safety and sustainability performance of advanced nanomaterials: A tiered approach along the innovation process

Recently there has been an increasing policy drive towards adopting the EC-JRC Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework for chemicals and materials. The European Green Deal policy ambitions, as outlined in the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the Zero Pollution Action Plan, have determined this path. The H2020 SUNSHINE project has developed an approach for SSbD assessment and decision making, tested in the case of products enabled by advanced multi-component nanomaterials (MCNMs). The SUNSHINE approach enables a comprehensive assessment of safety and sustainability aspects, considering the entire lifecycle of a material/product development. The SSbD approach is tiered and encompasses qualitative (Tier 1) and quantitative (Tier 2) assessment methods. Tier 1 consists of a self-assessment questionnaire to evaluate safety, functionality, and sustainability during the early R&D phases of chemical and material lifecycles to identify potential hotspots of concern. Once potential hotspots are identified, they are further evaluated through the application of Tier 2 using established quantitative methodologies such as the REACH Chemical Safety Assessment (CSA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social LCA (S-LCA). However, Chemical Safety Assessment (CSA) is not included in Tier 2 in this paper, as the focus is primarily on sustainability. The development and application of Tier 1 to one of SUNSHINE case study, a novel PFAS-free anti-sticking coating for the bakery industry, was already published. This paper focuses on applying Tier 2 to the same case study and identifying strategies for increasing safety and sustainability already at the design phase. The findings suggest that this innovative product is highly likely to surpass conventional benchmark materials in terms of safety and sustainability.