Introduction - Research Progress on Environmental Health and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials - page 5

BOX 1-1 Research-Progress Indicators
Adaptive research and knowledge infrastructure for accelerating research progress and providing rapid
feedback to advance the research
 Extent of development of libraries of well-characterized nanomaterials, including those prevalent in
commerce and reference and standard materials.
 Development of methods for detecting, characterizing, tracking, and monitoring nanomaterials and their
transformations in relevant media.
 Development of methods to quantify effects of nanomaterials in experimental systems.
 Advancement of systems for sharing results of research and fostering development of predictive models
for nanomaterial behaviors.
 Extent of joining together of existing databases, including development of common informatics
ontologies.
Quantifying and characterizing the origins of nanomaterial releases
Progress indicators will be related to short-term activities:
 Developing inventories of current and near-term production of nanomaterials.
 Developing inventories of intended use of nanomaterials and value-chain transfers.
 Identifying critical release points along the value chain.
 Identifying critical populations or systems exposed.
 Characterizing released materials and associated receptor environments.
 Modeling nanomaterial releases along the value chain.
Processes affecting both exposure and hazard
 Steps taken toward development of a knowledge infrastructure able to describe the diversity and dynamics
of nanomaterials and their transformations in relevant biologic and environmental media.
 Progress toward developing instrumentation to measure key nanomaterial properties and changes in them
in relevant biologic and environmental media.
 Initiation of interdisciplinary research that can relate native nanomaterial structures to transformations that
occur in organisms and as a result of biologic processes.
 Extent of use of experimental research results in initial models for predicting nanomaterial behavior in
complex biologic and environmental settings.
Nanomaterial interactions in complex systems ranging from subcellular systems to ecosystems
 Extent of initiation of studies that address heretofore underrepresented fields of research, such as those
seeking to relate in vitro to in vivo observations, to predict ecosystem effects, or to examine effects on the
endocrine or developmental systems.
 Steps toward development of models for exposure and potential effects along the ecologic food chain.
 Extent of refinement of a set of screening tools that reflect important characteristics or toxicity pathways
of the complex systems described above.
 Extent of adaptation of existing system-level tools (such as individual species tests, microcosms, and
organ-system models) to support studies of nanomaterials in such systems.
 Identification of benchmark (positive and negative) and reference materials for use in such studies and
measurement tools and methods to estimate exposure and dose in complex systems. 3
Source: NRC 2012, pp. 181-182.
3 In this report the committee differentiates between benchmark materials and reference materials. Additional
details are provided in Chapter 3.