RESUMEN
Legislation addressing environmental, health and safety aspects of nanomaterials in consumer products and ensuring their safe use is being continuously updated in the European Union and globally. This leads to a growing need for tools to implement this developing legislation. A freely accessible inventory of ready-to-use and publicly available tools that together cover the tasks within a nanomaterial safety assessment process was built in the presented work. This inventory is a unique metadata set in Excel® format: the 'NANoREG Toolbox', which assembles information needed for selecting and accessing instruments that meet specific goals. The recorded tools are categorised according to their purpose, type and regulatory status. The Toolbox covers an unprecedented and broad range of over 500 current tools, developed in Europe and beyond. While NANoREG focussed on safety assessment under the EU Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), the instruments in the Toolbox are relevant and useful for nanomaterial safety assessments worldwide.
RESUMEN
The European Commission has established a Nanomaterials Repository that hosts industrially manufactured nanomaterials that are distributed world-wide for safety testing of nanomaterials. In a first instance these materials were tested in the OECD Testing Programme. They have then also been tested in several EU funded research projects. The JRC Repository of Nanomaterials has thus developed into serving the global scientific community active in the nanoEHS (regulatory) research. The unique Repository facility is a state-of-the-art installation that allows customised sub-sampling under the safest possible conditions, with traceable final sample vials distributed world-wide for research purposes. This paper describes the design of the Repository to perform a semi-automated subsampling procedure, offering high degree of flexibility and precision in the preparation of NM vials for customers, while guaranteeing the safety of the operators, and environmental protection. The JRC nanomaterials are representative for part of the world NMs market. Their wide use world-wide facilitates the generation of comparable and reliable experimental results and datasets in (regulatory) research by the scientific community, ultimately supporting the further development of the OECD regulatory test guidelines.