Nanomaterial Safety Assessment
Nanoscience is revolutionizing products in many industries-from consumer products and drug delivery to solar cells and aerospace materials. In recent years, questions surrounding the safety of these products have companies looking for answers as they seek to protect their employees, consumers and the environment. Our capabilities can be divided into the following five signature areas:
Exposure Assessment: Is it there? How much?
Nanomaterials pose no human risk when exposures are near zero. Manufacturers are investing in assessment of workplace exposure to nanomaterials during product manufacturing and application to determine if the potential for health risks exist. More...
Materials Characterization: What are the physical & chemical properties?
PNNL's general approach is to combine measurements that average over a large ensemble of nanoparticles with those that probe single particle characteristics to obtain a useful picture of both average particle properties and the extent of variation. More...
Hazard Identification & Toxicology: Is it toxic?
Researchers at PNNL are leading the development of superior experimental and computational tools for predicting cellular dose of particles and nanomaterials in rodents and humans. More...
Risk Assessment: Are there human or environmental risks?
A computational model of particle kinetics and dosimetry for cell culture systems has been developed for selecting doses for in vitro toxicity screening studies that normalize delivered doses across particle types and reflects reasonable human exposure scenarios. More...
Risk Management: Are the risks acceptable or manageable?
Tools such as these and the associated expertise in particle dosimetry offer unequalled capability to extrapolate the results of nanoparticle toxicity studies across dose (high to low), study type (in vitro to in vivo), species (rodent to human) and sensitive populations (children, asthmatics). More...
