Chapter 13: Safety Guidelines: Recommendations by Various Nations

Safety measures for nanomaterials need to be integrated in existing regulations for hazardous substances. In this respect, intrinsic hazard properties and exposure-related risk should be considered. In the European Union (EU), the harmonized framework of CLP (for hazard) and REACh (for hazard and risk) can be used as a framework, because both are automatically translated into national law. The information that needs to be collected by the manufacturer in the preparation of various documents for these regulations can be communicated to the downstream user. However, this information needs to be converted into practical risk control measures that fit occupational safety regulations. In this respect, EU directives only define minimum standards, and each member state needs to transfer these into their framework of national law. In Germany, there is an extensive body of ordinances and related technical rules to do this. However, concrete measures and controls need to be defined in the actual work environment. To this end, some practical approaches are presented.