Lexikon

Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, one of the scientific committees of the Europian Commission.

It shall provide opinions on questions concerning emerging or newly identified health and environmental risks and on broad, complex or multidisciplinary issues requiring a comprehensive assessment of risks to consumer safety or public health and related issues not covered by other community risk assessment bodies.

Examples of potential areas of activity include potential risks associated with interaction of risk factors, synergic effects, cumulative effects, antimicrobial resistance, new technologies such as nanotechnologies, medical devices including those incorporating substances of animal and/or human origin, tissue engineering, blood products, fertility reduction, cancer of endocrine organs, physical hazards such as noise and electromagnetic fields (from mobile phones, transmitters and electronically controlled home environments), and methodologies for assessing new risks. It may also be invited to address risks related to public health determinants and non-transmissible diseases.

SCENIHR concludes that current risk assessment methodologies require some modification in order to deal with the hazards associated with nanotechnology and in particular that existing toxicological and ecotoxicological methods may not be sufficient to address all of the issues arising with nanoparticles.

http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_SCENIHR/04_SCENIHR_en.htm