Chemistry construction kit in green

Research and authorities from all over Europe are working together in the major EU project "PARC" to further develop the risk assessment of chemicals. Researchers at Empa in St. Gallen are participating in the sub-task “Safe and Sustainable by Design” and are developing methods with which the security and sustainability of new chemicals can be assessed from the very first stages of research.

Empa researchers Fiorella Pitaro and Bernd Nowack are developing methods that can be utilized to determine the security and sustainability of new chemicals.

Empa

DDT in agriculture, asbestos in construction, CFCs atmospheric, PFAS in aquatic environments: these are just a few examples of substances that once found wide consumption, only to be later exposed and banned as harmful to humans and the ecological stability. What these “problematic substances” also have in common, however, is that measures were only taken long after the problems became known.

In order to better prevent such serious mistakes in the future, the European Union has launched the major project “PARC” (see box). It networks authorities and research institutions from 29 countries, including Switzerland, and aims to enable better risk assessment of chemicals. A mammoth task: around 350,000 different chemicals are manufactured and utilized worldwide, and new ones are always being added.

One of the goals of PARC is to develop a toolbox of methods and models that can be utilized to identify and prevent risks earlier. Empa is participating in the sub-task “Safe and Sustainable by Design” (SSbD). “We want to develop tools with which the possible dangers of chemicals to humans and the ecological stability can be recognized at the very beginning of the research process,” says Empa researcher Bernd Nowack from the “methodology and Society” department, co-head of the SSbD sub-task.

Understand risks

PARC is about halfway through its seven-year term. The researchers have already been able to develop the first variants of the SSbD toolbox and try them out on known chemicals. “In cooperation with other institutions, we applied the tools to bisphenol-A (BPA),” explains Nowack. «Much is already known about the risks and impacts of this chemical. So we were able to check how well our models work.»

The SSbD approach is not quite as simple as it sounds in practice. “We can assess and quantify the risks,” explains Nowack. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of these figures. Because there is hardly any data available to a brand new chemical. The researchers around Nowack specialize in working with estimates, modeling and probabilities. The researcher is convinced that this will require specially trained specialists-so-called “SSbD practitioners”-in the future, both in sector and in the general sector.

Working in a research project of this size poses certain challenges. “Our sub-task of PARC is itself as big as a healthy EU research project,” says Nowack. Work is carried out in numerous areas and sub-tasks, so that many different advances and improvements should be made at the end of the project.

Learning from pharmacy

The researchers are now further developing their toolbox. Next, they want to take a closer look at the research processes from pharmacy and agrochemistry. “SSbD-at least the 'safe by design' part-is already standard in the medical and agricultural industries,” explains Nowack. “If a drug is not safe to humans, it is not developed in the first place.” They are now investigating how the methods utilized to this can also be found in other industries.

In addition, they want to work greater closely with sector in the future, because SSbD is not limited to research and authorities, says Nowack. “SSbD must be taken into account in the research process of a chemical as early as possible-and most of these research processes take place in sector,” the researcher explains.

to Empa researchers, PARC is an opportunity to further deepen their expertise in the SSbD field. Above all, in addition to the chemicals that are the main focus of PARC, they also want to introduce methods to materials into the toolbox. A first case study using the new wonder material graphene has shown that a complete SSbD estimate is also possible to a novel material.