Evaluation of in vitro methods for human hazard assessment applied in the OECD Testing Programme for the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials

The OECD Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Committee and Working Party on Chemicals, Pesticides and Biotechnology (the Joint Meeting) held a Special Session on the Potential Implications of Manufactured Nanomaterials for Human Health and Environmental Safety (June 2005). This was the first opportunity for OECD member countries, together with observers and invited experts, to begin to identify human health and environmental safety related aspects of manufactured nanomaterials. The scope of this session was intended to address the chemicals sector.

As a follow-up, the Joint Meeting decided to hold a Workshop on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials in December 2005, in Washington, D.C. The main objective was to determine the “state of the art” for the safety assessment of manufactured nanomaterials with a particular focus on identifying future needs for risk assessment within a regulatory context.

Based on the conclusions and recommendations of the Workshop [ENV/JM/MONO(2006)19] it was recognised as essential to ensure the efficient assessment of manufactured nanomaterials so as to avoid adverse effects from the use of these materials in the short, medium and longer term. With this in mind, the OECD Council established the OECD Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN) as a subsidiary body of the OECD Chemicals Committee in September 2006. This programme concentrates on human health and environmental safety implications of manufactured nanomaterials (limited mainly to the chemicals sector), and aims to ensure that the approach to hazard, exposure and risk assessment is of a high, science-based, and internationally harmonised standard. It promotes international co-operation on the human health and environmental safety of manufactured nanomaterials, and involves the safety testing and risk assessment of manufactured nanomaterials. 

This project, which was approved for inclusion in the WPMN work plan, was led by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Council for Animal Protection in OECD Programmes (ICAPO). The purpose of this evaluation was to review the dossiers of the Testing Programme and to evaluate which of the existing in vitro OECD Test Guidelines (TGs) were used, what other non-guideline methods were applied, and what were the potential limitations of each assay used for testing manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs).

This document is published under the responsibility of the Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Committee and Working Party on Chemicals, pesticides and Biotechnology of the OECD.

Link to the OECD Report "Evaluation of in vitro methods for human hazard assessment applied in the OECDTesting Programme for the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials"