Dr. Soeteman-Hernandez is a senior scientist at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands. She has a PhD in anatomy and cell biology/molecular toxicology. For the last 16 years she has been working on risk assessment of chemicals with a focus on nanomaterials. She is an expert in applying the Safe and Sustainable Innovation Approach (SSIA) for the development of safer and more sustainable chemicals, materials production processes and products. She is experienced in developing system approaches and translating them into operational tools. She is one of the main developers of SSIA which contains the concept of Regulatory Preparedness, Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design and Trusted Environment. These concepts originate from the awareness that new technologies like nanotechnology have uncovered the limits of present regulatory systems and demand more agile governance systems. She is co-chair and Leading Expert at the OECD Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials SSIA Steering Group, where she assesses how the international community develop and apply innovative, pro-active, co-creative and inclusive approaches to improve nano risk governance. The main focus of her work is the operationalization of SSIA and safe and-sustainable-by-design in the context of the recently published EC JRC framework and EC recommendation. This is reflected in her role as a work-package or task leader in many European projects working on the operationalization of safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SUNSHINE, IRISS, SURPASS, SAbyNA, PARC) for chemicals, materials production processes and products.
Integration of safety assessment and LCA within SSbD
Lya G. Soeteman-Hernández
RIVM – Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
The safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) concept is a central component in the European Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (EU-CSS) and supports the transition towards a toxic-free environment; one of the ambitious European Green Deal goals. SSbD is a pre-market approach for chemicals, materials and products, that focuses on providing a function or service and integrates safety and sustainability (environmental, social, and economic) aspects into the product design while adopting a lifecycle perspective. Several reports have been published by the EC Joint Research Center (JRC): A framework for the definition of criteria and evaluation procedure for chemicals and materials1, application of SSbD framework on case studies2, and a methodological guidance3. In addition, the EC has published a recommendation4 promoting this SSbD framework. The ‘by-design’ aspect of SSbD refers to applicability early in the innovation process and it should not be confused with risk and life cycle assessment for regulatory compliance. In order to apply SSbD, it is important to understand that risk assessment is a weight-of-evidence approach while a life cycle assessment is a comparative approach. Here, different strategies for combining safety and life cycle assessment will be described using different case studies.
