Research activities under this topic should strengthen the evidence on the impacts of micro- and nanoplastics exposure on human health, considering living and working environments and different exposure routes (inhalation, ingestion and dermal exposure). Proposals should focus on realistic concentrations of tested particles and exposures to a variety of sizes, shapes and chemical compositions of MNPs materials and advance in the comparability between studies. Moreover, research activities should take into account recent policy developments, support relevant policy gaps and needs and support the work on standardisation of analytical methods.

More specifically, research actions under this topic should include several of the following activities:

• Increase comparability and reproducibility between studies by means of a better optimisation, validation and standardisation of the analytical methods, protocols and methodologies to collect MNPs in the environment and detect and quantify the exposure in the human body and in the environment;
• Study the causal mechanisms of action and pathways involved on molecular, cellular and organism level effects from exposure to MNPs;
• Improve the understanding of the drivers of toxicity and other adverse health effects of MNPs, using realistic environmental samples and considering varying sizes, shapes, concentrations and chemical compositions, and interaction with components in the environment;
• Develop suitable and (environmentally) relevant reference materials that can be used to improve robustness and comparability across laboratories;
• Develop better in-vivo, in-silico and in-vitro models, instruments and methods for risk and hazard assessment harmonised across various types of MNPs. These include long-term exposure and monitoring models, mimicking real-world scenarios and dosimetry and observational studies on humans and development of strategies to integrate experimental and in-silico data;
• Strengthen the existing knowledge on human exposure to micro- and nanoplastics through the development of human biomonitoring studies and the use of specific biomarkers and endpoints;
• Generate evidence on the long-term impacts of MNPs on human health, MNPs’ fate and systemic effects through well-designed and robust systematic studies;
• Provide robust evidence on the exposures to MNPs at work: identify environments with highest concentrations and focus on improving approaches for assessment, prevention and mitigation of occupational exposures;
• Increase the understanding of the environmental routes of exposure to MNPs, considering real-life exposure routes;
• Propose mitigation measures to reduce population exposure to MNPs including collecting evidence on the health impacts of potential alternative materials developed to replace plastics;
• Gain better insights on the interactions between MNPs (and their additives) with other pollutants and/or biological agents and the combined impacts of these interactions on human health (considering also the understanding of individual toxicity effects);
• Gain better insights on the delivery mechanisms and study the elimination process of MNPs in the human body and the microbiome capacity to degrade (or accelerate degradation of) ingested MNPs;
• Promote exchange of knowledge and experiences across MS and policies and engage with regulators and public authorities to ensure suitability and further uptake of relevant results.

Gender and sex related differences should be addressed, where appropriate.

In order to maximise synergies and increase the impact of the projects, all proposals selected for funding from this topic will form a cluster and be required to participate in common networking and joint activities. Without the prerequisite to detail concrete joint activities, proposals should allocate a sufficient budget for the attendance of regular joint meetings and to cover the costs of any other potential common networking and joint activities. Guidance on the potential activities to be developed can be obtained by consulting the clusters of projects ongoing under the Environment, climate and health portfolio.