From Nano- to Advanced Materials: Lessons learnt in InnoMat.Life

We are looking forward to the final conference of our project project InnoMat.Life, which will take place on June 27th and 28th at BfR in Berlin.

Nanosafety research has made huge progress in the last decades. However, the main focus was on rather simple nanomaterials while materials on the market often cover broad size distributions (nm to μm), show a variety of different morphologies and may be composed of different substances. It remains unclear to which extent existing methods and knowledge can be applied to these complex material types.

The BMBF-funded project InnoMat.Life (“Innovative materials and new production processes: Safety along the life cycle and in industrial value chains”) addressed this challenge and investigated three additional material classes: (1) fibres, (2) polydisperse polymer particles for industrial applications such as additive manufacturing, and (3) materials with complex morphologies and / or composition. The project assessed exposure and hazards for humans and the environment considering the whole life cycle.

InnoMat.Life aimed to support regulators, industry and decision makers by providing suitable methods to conduct hazard and risk assessment of these innovative and complex material types with a special emphasis on establishing criteria and similarity concepts to perform grouping. To achieve this the project combined expertise from academia, agencies and industry.

The final conference addresses stakeholders from policy, science, industry and NGOs who are dealing with regulatory implications of innovative materials in the context of chemical safety. InnoMat.Life will present the final project outcomes and aims to discuss them in a broader context of other ongoing initiatives.

Registration is open till June 19th.