Pitaro Fiorella, Seeger Stefan, Nowack Bernd
Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Technology & Society Laboratory, St. Gallen, Switzerland; University of Zürich, Department of Chemistry, Zürich, Switzerland.
University of Zürich, Department of Chemistry, Zürich, Switzerland.
Environ Int. 2025 Mar;197:109345. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2025.109345. Epub 2025 Feb 28.
The shift toward a sustainable and toxic-free future requires integrating safety and sustainability aspects across the entire lifecycle of chemicals and materials. The Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework, developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), offers a systematic approach to support informed decision-making throughout the innovation process. The aim of this work was to investigate the opportunities and challenges of the SSbD framework through a detailed case study on graphene-based materials, implementing the SSbD Steps 1-4 with data from existing literature. The study assessed the framework's feasibility for materials and examined its potential for an absolute (non-comparative) application, including an evaluation across multiple or all potential uses of a chemical/material to be able to determine the overall safety and sustainability. The findings show that the framework offers a structured, adaptable approach to evaluating chemical and material safety and sustainability across their lifecycle, although challenges emerge for materials due to the small number of applicable models and tools. Further guidance on interpretating the results and SSbD scores of Steps 1-4 will facilitate an absolute assessment and distribute the effort required over an enhanced benefit. High Technology Readiness Level (TRL) materials, such as graphene-based materials, have sufficient data to support a comprehensive SSbD assessment considering multiple applications and to evaluate the material in an overall approach. This case study can support future users of the SSbD framework as well as provide valuable feedback for its ongoing review and adaptation.
向可持续且无毒的未来转变需要在化学品和材料的整个生命周期中整合安全与可持续性方面。欧盟委员会联合研究中心（JRC）制定的“设计中实现安全与可持续性”（SSbD）框架提供了一种系统方法，以支持在整个创新过程中做出明智的决策。这项工作的目的是通过对基于石墨烯的材料进行详细的案例研究，利用现有文献中的数据实施SSbD的步骤1至4，来研究SSbD框架的机遇和挑战。该研究评估了该框架对材料的可行性，并检验了其进行绝对（非比较性）应用的潜力，包括对一种化学品/材料的多种或所有潜在用途进行评估，以便能够确定总体安全性和可持续性。研究结果表明，该框架提供了一种结构化、可适应的方法，用于评估化学品和材料在其生命周期内的安全性和可持续性，尽管由于适用模型和工具数量较少，材料方面出现了一些挑战。关于解释步骤1至4的结果和SSbD分数的进一步指导将有助于进行绝对评估，并在提高效益的同时分配所需的工作量。高科技就绪水平（TRL）的材料，如基于石墨烯的材料，有足够的数据来支持考虑多种应用的全面SSbD评估，并以整体方法评估该材料。本案例研究可为SSbD框架的未来用户提供支持，并为其正在进行的审查和调整提供有价值的反馈。
