At the nanoscale, where materials and structures are just a fraction of the diameter of a human hair, completely new science takes over. Gold, for example, familiar to us as a shiny, yellow metal, reacts with light differently to appear red when in the form of tiny ball-like nanoparticles suspended in a liquid.
The novel properties exhibited by nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles could transform existing products or enable completely new ones such as long-lasting batteries, faster and more powerful electronic devices, and more targeted drugs.
However, this unique behaviour has a flipside. The small size of nanomaterials means that they might be able to find their way into cells or build up in soil and water, potentially causing harm.
It’s a major issue as there is an estimated 200 000 tonnes of products using nanomaterials already on the market in Europe in consumer goods like cosmetics, paints, and construction materials.
So far the news seems to be promising. According to Dr Tom van Teunenbroek, coordinator of the EUR 50 million EU-funded NANoReg project, there are no indications yet of a major cause for concern.
Dr van Teunenbroek, from the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and his team have pinpointed gaps in our knowledge and started exposure testing. By the end of the NANoReg project in 2016 he hopes to have developed methods that can be used to check how workers, users, and the environment might be exposed to nanomaterials.
“‘No-one has discovered toxicity that is off the scale.’
Professor Éva Valsami-Jones of the University of Birmingham, UK, has come to a similar conclusion during her work as coordinator of the EU NanoMILE project, which is developing ways of testing large numbers of nanomaterials simultaneously for toxicological and ecotoxicological effects.
‘No-one has discovered toxicity that is off the scale,’ she said. ‘As long as it is within the scale, compared to chemicals we already know about, we just have to be aware.’
It means that the best course of action is to make sure that products using nanotech are designed in a way that reduces the risks of any possible danger, according to Professor Valsami-Jones.
‘Let’s take the information we have and use it in a way that will enable the safer design of nanoparticles,’ she said.
Urgent
The goal is to find out exactly why these tiny particles behave differently, and the task is an urgent one. Nanomaterials are being added to building materials like cement, concrete, insulation, flame-retardants, and even pavements. But many of the 14 million construction workers employed in Europe don’t even know that they are working with nanomaterials.
‘Information for the raw material manufacturer is often lost while stepping down the user chain,’ said Dr Jesús López de Ipiña of Tecnalia Research and Innovation in Spain. ‘As a consequence, it is very difficult for an average construction company to conduct a proper risk assessment and organise a safe workplace for its employees.’
Existing worker protection like gloves, masks, and protection suits appears to be sufficient in protecting workers from nanoparticles, Dr López de Ipiña’s research project SCAFFOLD has found. The task now is to check if that’s true in practice.
Other key industries like paints, inks, and pigments, where nanomaterial-based products are being introduced, could also benefit from working closely with researchers, believes Carlos Fito, the coordinator of NanoMICEX, a European research project which is developing a way to assess the risk of nanomaterials and nano-based products.
His online tool will give manufacturers step-by-step actions to reduce worker and environmental exposure, according to Fito, who is based at ITENE, a logistics and packaging research centre in Valencia, Spain.
Concerted effort
These research projects, along with others such as SANOWORK, which develops safer manufacturing methods, and GUIDEnano, which develops a safety checklist for industry, are part of a concerted effort known as the NanoSafety Cluster which aims to find out exactly what the risks are.
The grouping brings together 50 Europe-wide collaborative projects on nanomaterial toxicity and exposure monitoring, risk management, and regulation that have received around EUR 137 million of research funding in the last 10 years or so.
It’s a good start, but manufacturers will continue to need information. New and novel nanomaterials are being developed all the time.
‘We will see more complex materials that will be radically different (from anything we have seen before),’ said Professor Kenneth Dawson of University College Dublin, who coordinates the FutureNanoNeeds project, which is developing a generic system for classifying the environmental impact of the next generation of nanomaterials. ‘We ain’t seen nothing yet.’
Recommended for you
