INMA Impulso: Blanca Serrano, from ECETOC (Brussels)
11 June 2025, 12:00, Salón de Grados, Faculty of Science, San Francisco Campus
Blanca Serrano, from the Europa Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC, Brussels)
‘How to connect science and legislation and not die trying’.
About the speaker: Blanca Serrano is Secretary General of ECETOC, where she leads scientific initiatives to improve chemical risk assessment and facilitate its regulatory implementation. With a background in Cefic and FEIQUE, she has worked on topics such as nanomaterials, microplastics and substance classification. With a PhD in nanotechnology from the Eindhoven University of Technology, she combines scientific and regulatory expertise to drive innovative approaches to chemicals management (more information on this link).
About the seminar: Chemicals are an essential part of our daily lives and contribute significantly to social and economic development. At the same time, the potential risks associated with their use need to be properly understood and managed. Therefore, legislative frameworks are developed to regulate their manufacture, application and uses. However, translating scientific knowledge into legislation is not a straightforward process. Making regulation effective, practical and enforceable requires more than evidence: it requires dialogue, mutual understanding and compromise between all actors involved. This talk offers a practical look at how science and legislation can (and should) meet, through concrete examples such as the registration of nanomaterials and the recent restriction of polymeric microparticles under the REACH regulation. We will see what role scientists, whether from universities, industry or public administrations, can play in the development of regulatory policies, and why it is so important to have diverse views. Because understanding each other is not always easy, but it is essential to build rules that work in the real world.
