Department Environmental Toxicology

The Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework was introduced by the European Commission (EC) in 2022 as a voluntary tool aiming to facilitate the “green” transition of chemical industry in Europe, in line with the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). While the SSbD framework offers an inspirational vision for reconciling chemical economy and environmental protection needs, practical experience with the application of the SSbD at the molecular design stage, or with its integration into material development routines, has been so far scarce. Thus, further progress on SSbD requires development of fit-for-purpose tools and design of smart workflows that enable efficient testing and incorporation of test results along the chemical and material innovation process.

We address these needs in the project “SSbD-vitrimers”, where we are collaborating with Empa-based chemists and material developers to co-develop a practical workflow for integrating aquatic toxicity considerations into the R&D process for polymeric materials, focusing on novel flame retardant vitrimers as a case study.

The project foresees developing an iterative workflow where in silico tools and standardized alternative (non-animal) tests for aquatic toxicity will be used to generate toxicity data for test materials. Collected toxicity data will be integrated with data on material properties and functions, in order to find the optimal composition and/or identify potential problems or further development needs, thus facilitating the next steps in material creation and optimization.

Apart from pursuing the outlined experimental strategy, this project also seeks to advance the conceptual understanding of the SSbD framework and its associated empirical testing needs.