The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Partnership to Advance Research and Guidance for Occupational Safety and Health in Nanotechnology (P3NANO).
The partnership between NIOSH and P3NANO will serve as a platform for occupational safety and health research as well as educational and business initiatives leading to the development of new risk management guidance, recommendations, and findings relating to the potential human health impacts of exposure to nanoscale cellulose materials.“NIOSH is pleased and excited to be able to partner with P3Nano in the early stages of the development of cellulose nanomaterials.
Safe and responsible development of nanotechnology is a national priority and collaborations such as this create an opportunity to generate knowledge and practices that will facilitate that critical responsibility," said Chuck Geraci, PhD, CIH, NIOSH associate director for nanotechnology.Since 2012, NIOSH has been involved in nanoscale cellulose research and field work. As part of the partnership established by this MOU, P3Nano will collaborate with NIOSH to provide a platform for the discovery and dissemination of fundamental knowledge in the emerging interdisciplinary fields of cellulose-based nanotechnology, including nanomanufacturing. This effort will lead to the joint development of effective occupational safety and health guidance.
The P3nano collaboration will offer greater opportunity for the application of life cycle assessment to explore the long-term societal and environmental implication of large-scale production and use of cellulose-based nanomaterials. P3Nano offers NIOSH an affiliation with its partners and grant recipients, through whom collaborative research efforts will improve basic understanding of occupational health implication of cellulose-based nanomaterials, contribute to guidelines and industrial best practices for working with cellulose-based nanomaterials, and generate new findings and recommendations for stakeholders.
P3NANO is a public-private partnership that aims to advance the knowledge base for nanoscale forms of cellulose to overcome market barriers to commercialization, including a specific focus on environmental health and safety (EHS) as it relates to workplace safety, product and application safety demonstration, and environmental issues.
Fonte: NanoWerk
