Nanomaterials are man-made materials of a size thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. They have fascinated scientists and industry with their unique and unpredictable properties, which have given rise to an endless variety of new applications in every sector of technology and medicine. As a result, an ever-increasing number of nanomaterials are entering the market in everyday products spanning from healthcare and leisure to electronics, cosmetics and foodstuffs. However, the novelty in exploitable properties may be mirrored by new hazards and, in order to manage these, a well-founded and robust legislative framework that will ensure safe development of nano-enabled products is needed.

The development of such a framework has proven particularly challenging; at the heart of the challenge lies the difficulty in the reliable and reproducible characterisation of nanomaterials given their novelty, variety in properties and forms and dynamic nature, particularly in complex conditions, such as within different biological, environmental and technological compartments.

To resolve this, the ACEnano project, coordinated by the University of Birmingham (UK), is working towards introducing confidence, adaptability and clarity into nanomaterial risk assessment by developing a widely implementable and robust tiered approach to nanomaterials physicochemical characterisation that will simplify the choice of characterisation methods, and facilitate contextual (hazard or exposure) description and its transcription into a reliable nanomaterials grouping framework.