Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
Damià Barceló; Dept. Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain / Catalan
Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Científic i Tec-nològic de la Universitat de Girona, Spain
Antoni Ginebreda; Dept. Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
Dani Guillén¸ Dept. Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
Rosa-Maria Darbra; Dept. Chemical Engineering. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain
1
Introduction
The global trade of products that occurs since some years ago is directly related with
the chemical flows. For example, products produced in China are sold in the USA
and then recycled in Vietnam. This flow of material involves a movement of chemicals at the same global scale since the differents products that are traded (plastic
toys, textiles, electronic appliances, paper, etc.) incorporate different chemical additives. These chemicals are added to the products in order to give them certain desired properties: flame resistance, protection to UV light, conductivity, color, etc.
Therefore, many potential hazardous compounds are traded as chemicals or incorporated as additives in products. Their potential release of harmful substances to the
environment can pose a risk for the nature and for the human being on a worldwide
scale.
Being aware of the fact that humans and the environment are subject to the risk of
chemical impacts on a day to day basis, management of chemicals including reduction of risks has led to the rise of several policy instruments taking diverse forms (EU
Directives, international programmes and agreements) as well as to co-operations
both at the global and European levels. In that context, the REACH [1] regulation
must be highlighted as a representative and valuable example.
This background of chemicals and additives in products produced and marketed
globally, makes an international harmonised assessment and management essential.
A new framework for hazard evaluation and risk assessment of existing and new
chemicals has been established through the RISKCYCLE coordination action that
plays an important role in order to ensure the implementation of the aforementioned
new legislation and to aim at a global risk-based management system of chemicals.
2
Riskcycle Coordination Action
Chemical testing, research on risks, impacts and management options is carried out
throughout the globe but quite fractionated to certain areas and sectors and much too
often with little linkages between the different scientific communities. The coordination action RISKCYCLE collects a number of high quality researchers from different scientific communities to form interdisciplinary working groups to cover the
wide range of aspects:

The fate and behaviour of chemicals and products,
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Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra

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
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RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
The assessment of chemical dispersion and drain over the life cycle of different type products,
The risk-based management for chemicals and products
The alternative toxicity testing to minimise animal tests
The circular economy of the traded products
The overall objective of RISKCYCLE aims to establish a global network to explore
the synergies of the research carried out within different programmes and countries
of the EU, USA, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Vietnam etc. and to facilitate the communication with researchers, institutions and industries and make the information
about the risks of hazardous chemicals and additives in products and the risk reduction measures for substances widely available.
In order to accomplish such a broad objective, Riskcycle has established and a global network of European and international experts and stakeholders from different
programmes to define together future needs of R+D contributions for innovations in
the field of risk-based management of chemicals and products of a circular economy
in a global perspective making use of alternative strategies to animals test if possible
and necessary.
The RISKCYCLE initiative will influence policy issues at a global scale, not only in
developing countries but also in developed ones and will create awareness and enhance state of the art on risk-based management of chemicals and products among
stakeholders.
2.1
Specific Objectives
The specific objectives of RISKCYCLE are:

to exploit complementary elements needed with regard to the research objectives, methodologies and data of ongoing as well as recently completed EU
and international projects

to specify demands for tools for ecological design of consumer products, production, use and reuse of products and waste recycled to secondary material
and products. Methods such as LCA, risk assessment and risk reduction
strategies, environmental impact analysis, material flow analysis and economics related tools are considered to achieve socio-eco-efficient solutions

to create a powerful platform enabling discussion among all stakeholders on
usage, risks, chemical properties of consumer products, labelling and the fate
of certain chemicals in products traded, used and recycled in a global scale,
identify problems and solutions

to contribute to the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for chemical substances and mixtures

to start with a conceptual development of a global strategy for a risk-based
management of chemicals and additives in recycling and trade products
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Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy

to identify alternative testing strategies and methods to avoid the enlargement
and the outsource of animal tests to East and Southeast Asia

to identify knowledge and research gaps for future research activities

to consider the most effective way of ensuring continuing progress in this field
involving EU and other partners at global scale including also international organisations.
The RISKCYCLE network closely collaborates with related projects, EU and international bodies and authorities to communicate and agree on standards and to avoid
duplication and redundant work.
3
Workpackage work
In this section a brief description of the aim and work done until the moment will be
presented for workpackage 3 and 5, since they are the workpackages leaded by the
authors of this communication.
3.1
Work package 3
The aim of work package 3 (WP3) is to assemble and evaluate existing information
about the additives fate and behaviour at a global scale. CSIC (Spanish Research
Council) is the WP3 leader.
Currently detailed studies about the flow of additives from the production to reuse,
recycling and waste are researched and analysed for the following sectors selected
by Riskcycle: textile, electronics, plastics, leather, paper and lubricants. This will provide the basis for flow diagrams.
A database of chemical additives is also being developed by this WP. Its aim is to
establish a global network of information that will be very helpful for assessing the
risks of hazardous additives in products.
Data sources, which are screened and carefully analysed, are mainly research projects analysing hazardous components in products, reports and studies from EU and
other countries, with special emphasis on the participating countries Vietnam, China,
Brazil and India and already existing databases.
Project partners CSIC and UPC (Polytechcnic University of Catalonia) have already
designed and developed the database structure, capable to handle different categories of information relative to chemical additives (such as physical, chemical and ecotoxicological properties, documents, graphs, figures, images, or links to other websites). At the moment, CSIC is working on the fulfillment of the database in collaboration with the rest of the partners. Once the development period for the database is
finished, it will be accessible via the RISKCYCLE web page to the members of the
consortium.
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Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
During the first part of the project, each WP devoted efforts to research information
on different additives used in one sector. WP3 was responsible for the data-mining of
the leather and paper sector.
A search of information related to additives of the leather and paper sectors was
done. Based on their physico-chemical and eco-toxicological properties, their environmental occurrence and their production and trade figures a selection of the most
representative additives of these sector was done. The selected substances for the
paper sector were: Bisphenol A, Dibutyl phthalate and Isothiazolinones. In the case
of the leather sector the selected additives were: PCP (Pentachlorophenol) and
TCMTB ((benzothiazol-2-ylthio)methyl thiocyanate).
This work has been the basis for the redaction of two chapters in the first volume of
the Riskcycle book: Global Risk-Based Management of Chemical Additives I: Production, Usage and Environmental Occurrence in The handbook of Environmental
Chemistry.
3.2
Workpackage 5
The main objective of workpackage 5 (WP5) is the identification of different methodologies that can be used to assess the risk of chemicals in products concerning human health and the environment. The final aim is to select the best and most convenient ones and apply them to a set of selected case studies related to the sectors and
countries participating in RISKCYCLE project. This WP is led by UPC.
The first task that was done by WP5 was the aforementioned data-mining concerning
the additives used in the textile sector. The work was done following the steps in table 1:
Table 1:
Data-mining for the textile sector
Task
1
Collection of general information on textiles and additives used in
this sector.
Task
2
Pre-selection of the most representatives groups of additives used in this
sector.
Task
3
Selection of 2-3 substances/additives according to several criteria.
Task
4
Presentation of risk scenarios for these substances.
First of all, a thorough survey of literature (scientific papers, internet sites, databases,
etc.) was performed to identify the diverse processes and products used in the textile
sector. The additives used in this sector were divided according to their function (e.g.
softeners, flame retardants, dyers).
Their potential harmful action to the environment and human health was analysed
and taking into consideration all the information gathered, a pre-selection of the most
representative groups of additives was carried out (flame retardants, repellent finishers, antimicrobial finishers, easy-care and durable press finishers and dyestuffs).
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Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
According to a set of criteria established by the WP5 partners, three substances were
selected: brominated compounds –HBCD- (flame retardant), perfluorocarbon compounds –PFOA and PFOS- (repellent finisher) and triclosan (antimicrobial finisher).
For these substances, a deep study on their potential risk to the environment and
human health was performed, obtaining general risk scenarios for each case.
As in WP3, the results of this research have been the basis for a chapter production
for the first volume of the Riskcycle book.
The second task carried out in WP5 has been a document gathering the different risk
assessment methodologies for environment and human impact. From this work, a
selection of two of them has been done after discussion with the WP5 members in
different meetings: USEtox and 2- FUN.
From now on they will be used to assess the risk of selected chemical additives in
specific case studies. For the moment, these case studies will be settled in China
and India and they will be focused on electronic waste additives, mainly lead and
brominated flame retardants. Once getting the first results, new scenarios will be defined including other of the selected additives. These assessments will allow the WP
to do a critical evaluation of the methodologies and of data requirement availability,
identifying therefore the research gaps related to the additives risk assessment.
4
Literature
[1] REGULATION (EC) No 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation
and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), establishing a European Chemicals
Agency, amending Directive 1999/45/EC and repealing Council Regulation (EEC)
No 793/93 and Commission Regulation (EC) No 1488/94 as well as Council Directive 76/769/EEC and Commission Directives 91/155/EEC, 93/67/EEC,
93/105/EC and 2000/21/EC
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Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda
Dani Guillén
Rosa-Maria Darbra
RISKCYCLE project: a new approach for assessing the risk of
chemicals in a circular economy
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