title: Application of a quantitative weight of evidence approach for ranking and prioritising occupational exposure scenarios for titanium dioxide and carbon nanomaterials.
abstract: Substantial limitations and uncertainties hinder the exposure assessment of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs). The present deficit of reliable measurements and models will inevitably lead in the near term to qualitative and uncertain exposure estimations, which may fail to support adequate risk assessment and management. Therefore it is necessary to complement the current toolset with user-friendly methods for near-term nanosafety evaluation. This paper proposes an approach for relative exposure screening of ENMs. For the first time, an exposure model explicitly implements quantitative weight of evidence (WoE) methods and utilises expert judgement for filling data gaps in the available evidence-base. Application of the framework is illustrated for screening of exposure scenarios for nanoscale titanium dioxide, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, but it is applicable to other nanomaterials as well. The results show that the WoE-based model overestimates exposure for scenarios where expert judgement was substantially used to fill data gaps, which suggests its conservative nature. In order to test how variations in input data influence the obtained results, probabilistic Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis was applied to demonstrate that the model performs in stable manner.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, University Ca' Foscari Venice , Venice , Italy.
authors.forename: Danail R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Hristozov
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gottardo
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cinelli
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Isigonis
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zabeo
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Critto
authors.forename: Martie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van Tongeren
authors.forename: Lang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcomini
mesh_terms: D002244:Carbon / Q000633:toxicity*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000633:toxicity*; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014025:Titanium / Q000633:toxicity*; D018675:Toxicity Tests
chemical_list: C009495:titanium dioxide; D002244:Carbon; D014025:Titanium