🧪 Chemicals that are safe and sustainable by design is the way forward. TNO's proactive approach enables the early identification of opportunities to improve safety and sustainability during the innovation process, throughout the entire life cycle. ♻ Take a step forward to SSbD ➡ https://tno.social/u2o
TNO's approach for Safe and Sustainable chemicals
Transcript
If companies embrace this approach, I think we all have the same goal in the end. I'm not concerned that any company would like to make a product... that's damaging our environment. Of course, they don't want to do that. There is a huge demand from society for novel materials, chemicals, products... and the challenge for industry is to look into the health, safety... and sustainability aspects of all these novel chemicals and materials. The speed of new innovations is higher... than the level of risk assessment that we can perform. So we create an iceberg of chemicals that we have not evaluated yet. So, for example, the World Health Organization estimated that yearly about... 2 million deaths can be attributed to chemical exposure. But in Europe, there is specific legislation being promoted. Europe is really trying to push forward this toxic free environment, preventing any hazardous chemicals from entering the market. TNO can help product developers... in providing the full scale of different parameters that underpin... the decision that needs to be made to go to the next stage of innovation. And usually they look at functionality versus cost, and we would like to add... safety and sustainability to that to make a full scale... criteria overview of all the parameters that should be included in the decision. TNO is now developing an approach, we call this the Safe and Sustainable by Design approach, in which... we really want to assess potential risks for both humans and the environment... very early on in the product innovation process. So you always start with defining the product criteria... for the intended use of the chemical, material or product. Then we provide a quick screening of the selected SSbD aspects... like health and safety, sustainability, functionality and cost. Using the SSdB decision support tool that we have at TNO, based on the available information and modeling. Then based on this information, we provide a transparent visualisation... and integration of all the impacts of the different SSbD aspects. And finally, make a decision based on the transparent visualisation. And if necessary, a more detailed evaluation of one or more of the SSbD aspects can be provided... to get more insight into one of the parameters. The idea is that with the Safe and Sustainable by Design approach, we prevent harmful substances from entering the market. So that industries have an approach to really search for alternatives... that have the same functionality without the hazardous properties. So they usually say: fail early, fail cheap. So once you know that... something will never get to the market because of potential health risk, you���d better know it as soon as possible, before you start making all the costs. And the second thing is the reputation damage... that can be there for companies, because they developed something in the past... that caused effects to our environment and human health. We believe TNO has a unique expertise in-house. SSbD really requires a multidisciplinary approach. So this means you need people to have expertise on material science... chemists, but also expertise on toxicology, epidemiology, sustainability... lifecycle assessments, economical aspects, everything should be integrated. And within TNO, for each different field we have the experts in-house. So we can really work together, and make this integration together. And understand different use cases from different perspectives. If there's a new product, we don't have data for that specific product. But what we do have is a database with a lot of product information from, let's say, similar products... that are not exactly the same, but they may have the same properties. And there we can try to predict the toxicological effects... or the effect on the environment based on related products. And of course then, if that's insufficient, we could also do laboratory tests, for instance, or do in vitro toxicity testing... to really help the industry... in getting the right toxicity data for their new product. And then, of course, into the future, we would like to further develop this... and further refine this by collaborating with the industry... and tailor it to their needs, because it's their tool, and we would like to assist them in the transition that we need to make.To view or add a comment, sign in
