Recommendations on Priorities for IARC Monographs Include Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes, Nanomaterials

An Advisory Group of 29 scientists from 18 countries met on March 25-27, 2019, to recommend priorities for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs program during 2020-2024.  The Advisory Group assessed the response to a public call for nominations and considered more than 170 unique candidate agents, including the recommended priorities remaining from a similar Advisory Group meeting convened in 2014.  The Advisory Group deliberated on all nominated agents both by evidence stream and by type of agent to inform development of priority recommendations.  The Advisory Group recommended a broad range of agents with high, medium, or low priority for evaluation.  The Advisory Group assigned priority on the basis of evidence of human exposure and the extent of available evidence for evaluating carcinogenicity.  Agents without evidence of human exposure or evidence for evaluating carcinogenicity were not recommended for further consideration.  The Advisory Group notes that it recognized that agents related to the identified priorities might also warrant evaluation.  Furthermore, additional agents might merit consideration if new relevant evidence indicating an emerging carcinogenic hazard becomes available in the next five years.  IARC announced on April 18, 2019, that the recommendations were published in The Lancet Oncology, “Advisory Group recommendations on priorities for the IARC Monographs.”  The list of agents previously evaluated by IARC Monographs and recommended for evaluation with high priority includes multi-walled carbon nanotubes.  The list of medium priority agents includes nanomaterials, “e.g., titanium dioxide or nanosilica.”