Triggered by major contaminations, chemicals legislation is in place, regulated sector-wise for industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, veterinary pharmaceuticals, pesticides and biocides. The number of new chemicals entering the market increases rapidly and chemical safety is rarely the focal point of newly-designed chemicals and -products. Regulators are struggling to keep pace with current developments in the chemical industry.
Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) is a promising approach to develop new substances that are safe and sustainable. However, well-elaborated tools to guide the selection of SSbD alternatives that fullfill the desired and essential function in a given application are missing. Furthermore, tools to guide sustainable production of these alternatives are to be developed. Finally, once available, such tools have to be implemented, tested and further improved by putting them in practice. As many stakeholders are involved in chemical value chains, implementation comes with practical challenges as how to balance heterogeneous values, divide responsibilities and deal with uncertainties within the chemicals’ innovation ecosystem.
In this proposal, we will focus on Persistent, Mobile and Toxic chemicals (PMTs), which are difficult to remove by environmental technologies, are relatively difficult to detect, can spread widely, and are currently still poorly incorporated into regulation, thereby posing a risk to the watercycle and human and ecological health.
The proposed TOSS project will therefore develop integrated tools to select and produce SSbD alternatives for PMTs, will gain experience with putting SSbD in practice including active contributions of different stakeholders, and will formulate lessons for industry, academic research and policy.
