ICON issues survey of safety practices in nanotechnology industry

ICON issues survey of safety practices in nanotechnology industry

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

The first comprehensive, international survey of workplace safety practices in the burgeoning nanotechnology industry finds that most nanotech companies and laboratories believe nanoparticles — specks of matter that are smaller than living cells — pose specific environmental and health risks for workers. Despite this, companies and labs typically have workers use conventional environmental, health and safety (EHS) practices when handling nanomaterials, even though the practices were developed to deal with bulk materials that can have markedly different chemical properties than their nano-sized counterparts.

”The use of conventional practices for handling nanomaterials appears to stem from a lack of information on the toxicological properties of nanomaterials, as well as nascent regulatory guidance regarding the proper environmental, health and safety practices that should be used with them,” said Kristen Kulinowski, director of the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON), a coalition of academic, industrial, governmental and civil society organizations that commissioned the survey.

The report, ”A Survey of Current Practices in the Nanotechnology Workplace,” is available at. A research team from the University of California