Citation:

Boyes, W. Evaluating the Environmental Health and Safety Impact of Engineered Nanomaterials. North East Nanomaterials Meeting (NENM2018), Lake Placid, NY, June 01 - 03, 2018.

Impact/Purpose:

A framework was developed to evaluate the health and safety implications of ENM releases into the environment. Considerations encompassed potential releases of ENM to the environment across product life cycles, fate, transport and transformations in environmental media, exposed populations, and possible adverse outcomes.

Description:

Engineered nanomaterials (ENM) are a fundamental and growing component of the global economy, and are projected to reach an annual economic impact in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Their spreading use far outpaces our ability to evaluate potential for adverse impacts on environmental health and safety. We developed a framework to evaluate the health and safety implications of ENM releases into the environment. Considerations encompassed potential releases of ENM to the environment across product life cycles, fate, transport and transformations in environmental media, exposed populations, and possible adverse outcomes. The framework was structured as a series of compartmental flow diagrams to guide future development of quantitative predictive models, identify research needs, and support development of tools for making risk-based decisions. If released, most ENM are not expected to remain in their original form due to reactivity and/or propensity for hetero-agglomeration in environmental media. Therefore, emphasis was placed transformations of ENM that might occur in environmental or biological matrices. Predicting the activity of ENM is difficult due to the multiple dynamic interactions between the physical/chemical aspects of ENM and similarly complex environmental conditions. Therefore, the use of simple predictive functional assays was proposed as an intermediate step to address the challenge of predicting environmental fate and behavior of ENM. The nodes of the proposed framework reflect phase transitions that could be targets for development of such assays. Application, refinement, and demonstration of the framework, along with an associated knowledgebase that includes targeted functional assay data, will someday allow better de novo predictions of potential ENM exposures and adverse outcomes. Only by developing an efficient ability to forecast and avoid potential environmental health and safety problems across the life cycle of ENM development, use and disposal, can we fully realize the many potential societal benefits promised by the nanotechnology revolution.

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