Abstract
This paper presents the outcomes from a workshop of the European Network on the Health and Environmental Impact of Nanomaterials (NanoImpactNet). During the workshop, 45 experts in the field of safety assessment of engineered nanomaterials addressed the need to systematically study sets of engineered nanomaterials with specific metrics to generate a data set which would allow the establishment of dose-response relations. The group concluded that international cooperation and worldwide standardization of terminology, reference materials and protocols are needed to make progress in establishing lists of essential metrics. High quality data necessitates the development of harmonized study approaches and adequate reporting of data. Priority metrics can only be based on well-characterized dose-response relations derived from the systematic study of the bio-kinetics and bio-interactions of nanomaterials at both organism and (sub)-cellular levels. In addition, increased effort is needed to develop and validate analytical methods to determine these metrics in a complex matrix.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Mike Garner from the Intel Corporation for his introductory presentation in the first session of the Workshop. The authors thank the following, who were participants in the workshop but did not contribute to authorship of this report: K. Alstrup Jensen, D. Berhanu, K. Bhattacharya, D. Bloch, N. Boschung, K. Carey, P. Chandra Naha, N. Ó Claonadh, J. Colreavy, M. Cullen, M. Davoren, J. Dorney, A. Dybowska, L. Galluzzi, V. Hackley, N. Harrison, E. Herzog, A. Hills, P. Hole, JP. Kaiser, G. Kastrinaki, A. Lesniak, S. Loft, L. Migliore, S. Misra, N. O'Brien, S. Prasanna Mukherjee, J. M. Riego Sintes, G. Roebben, A. Salvati, R. Schierl, H. Schug, F. Turci, E.Valsami-Jones, D. Walczyk, L. Walsh, Q. Wu. Two independent experts are acknowledged for their valuable comments on the manuscript: A. Sips from the National Institute of Public Health & The Environment (RIVM), The Netherlands, and H. Hofmann from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
Declaration of Interest: The work was funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, NMP4-CA-2008-218539, for projectNanoImpactNet. The authors would like to report no conflict of interests. The authors are entirely responsible for the content and writing of the manuscript.