Life-cycle Risk Assessment of Consumer Applications of Graphene: Outcomes, Data Gaps and Priorities

Nano Life-cycle Risk Assessment (LCRA) is an adaptive screening-level risk assessment framework. The iterative process is a semiquantitative evaluation of potential risks of nanomaterials across the product life-cycle to inform early decision-making about nanomaterial and novel nanoscale technologies. As an independently funded US partner of the DIAGONAL consortium, Vireo Advisors developed a Nano LCRA for occupational, consumer and environmental receptors of a graphene composite as a case study.

The analysis identifies potential receptors and exposure pathways at each life-cycle stage. These scenarios are ranked by applying exposure criteria to identify priority pathways for evaluation. Where possible, potential exposures are characterized for the priority pathways and evaluated alongside available hazard data in the peer reviewed literature. The risk assessment uses simplified worst-case assumptions to determine whether more detailed assessments are warranted to demonstrate safety for the proposed application(s) in functional fabrics.

This talk presents the main findings of the graphene-composite LCRA. Outcomes include a data gap analysis that identifies gaps in our current understanding of safety for graphene-enabled applications, and a set of research priorities to address them.  The analysis contributes key findings to guide safety testing under DIAGONAL, and toward the development of Safe(r)-by-Design (SbD) strategies.