MANAGEMENT AND RISK ASSESSMENT OF ENMs

Employers, in their concern to manage risks, have established as a final objective in occupational health and safety the search for the protection of their personnel against occupational diseases through the identification, management and prevention of the risks of ENMs.

However, experiences showed that the available data were insufficient to be sure of the appropriate exposure mitigation methods and engineering controls, highlighting risk management as an important factor.

According to NIOSH (2009ª), the risk management recommendations were maximum protection, incorporating the total containment of possible exposures to NMD and highlighting the importance of medical surveillance. The introduction of models, such as the Nano Risk Framework, promoted the use of a systematic approach used by the chemical industry

Quantitative risk assessments for ultrafine or fine particles have used standard risk assessment methods and dosimetry models that take into account differences in lung doses in animals and humans (Kuempel et al. 2006). These methods were used to estimate the risk of lung diseases specific to the particle size of titanium dioxide (TiO 2) based on lung load.

The OECD has recommended categorizing materials by similarities in physicochemical properties to obtain reasonable estimates of the bioactivity of a nanomaterial These approaches offer a useful way to interpret the often incomplete data on NMEs although they are not generally accepted.