Beginning of December 2017, the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) published a report entitled “Clarification of methodical questions regarding the investigation of nanomaterials in the environment: Development of a decision support tool for the investigation of nanomaterial’s environmental behaviour based on dispersion behaviour and dissolution in relation to various environmental parameters”. The final report describes the considerations, experimental approaches, and obtained results that build the basis for the new OECD Test Guideline. The report also contains a literature review of transformation reactions of nanomaterials in environmental media.

For an adequate and valid interpretation of data regarding the environmental fate and behaviour of nanomaterials it is essential to describe parameters like dissolution (rate), dispersibility and dispersion stability. The aim of the project was the development of a standardized test method to determine dispersibility and dispersion stability of nanomaterials in simulated environmental media as new OECD Test Guideline.

For this objective, both conceptual and experimental work was conducted and an international round robin was initiated and executed to validate the proposed test setup regarding reliability and reproducibility. Two comprehensive expert commenting rounds of the OECD Test Guideline program supported the refinement of the draft within this project.

The test method developed in this project was submitted to the OECD Test Guideline program by UBA and published by OECD in October 2017 as new “Test Guideline on dispersion stability of nanomaterials in simulated environmental media (OECD No. 318)”.

Original Publications:

1. OECD (2017). Test No. 318: Dispersion Stability of Nanomaterials in Simulated Environmental Media. OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI:10.1787/9789264284142-en

2. Umweltbundesamt (Dec 2017). Clarification of methodical questions regarding the investigation of nanomaterials in the environment: Development of a decision support tool for the investigation of nanomaterial’s environmental behaviour based on dispersion behaviour and dissolution in relation to various environmental parameters. Texte | 108/2017, ISSN 1862-4804. (PDF, 3.3 MB)