Tag Archives: Nano to go!

‘Nano to go’, a practical guide to safe handling of nanomaterials and other innovative materials in the workplace

If you’ve been looking for a practical guide to handling nanomaterials you may find that nanoToGo fills the bill. From an Oct. 23, 2015 posting by Lynn Bergeson for Nanotechnology Now,

In September 2015, “Nano to go!” was published. See http://nanovalid.eu/index.php/nanovalid-publications/306-nanotogo “Nano to go!” is “a practically oriented guidance on safe handling of nanomaterials and other innovative materials at the workplace.” The German Federal Institute for Occupational Health (BAuA) developed it within the NanoValid project.

From the nanoToGo webpage on the NanoValid project website (Note: Links have been removed),

Nano to go! contains a brochure, field studies, presentations and general documents to comprehensively support risk assessment and risk management. …

Brochure →

The brochure Safe handling of nanomaterials and other advanced materials at workplacessupports risk assessment and risk management when working with nanomaterials. It provides safety strategies and protection measures for handling nanomaterials bound in solid matrices, dissolved in liquids, insoluble or insoluble powder form, and for handling nanofibres. Additional recommendations are given for storage and disposal of nanomaterials, for protection from fire and explosion, for training and instruction courses, and for occupational health.

Field Studies→

The field studies comprise practical examples of expert assessment of safety and health at different workplaces. They contain detailed descriptions of several exposure measurements at pilot plants and laboratories. The reports describe methods, sampling strategies and devices, summarise and discuss results, and combine measurements and non-measurement methods.

General →

Useful information, templates and examples, such as operating instructions, a sampling protocol, a dialogue guide and a short introduction to safety management and nanomaterials.

Presentations →

Ready to use presentations for university lecturers, supervisors and instruction courses, complemented with explanatory notes.

The ‘brochure’ is 56 pages; I would have called it a manual.

As for the NanoValid project, there’s this from the project’s homepage,

The EU FP7 [Framework Programme 7] large-scale integrating project NanoValid (contract: 263147) has been launched on the 1st of November 2011, as one of the “flagship” nanosafety projects. The project consists of 24 European partners from 14 different countries and 6 partners from Brazil, Canada, India and the US and will run from 2011 to 2015, with a total budget of more than 13 mio EUR (EC contribution 9.6 mio EUR). Main objective of NanoValid is to develop a set of reliable reference methods and materials for the fabrication, physicochemical (pc) characterization, hazard identification and exposure assessment of engineered nanomaterials (EN), including methods for dispersion control and labelling of ENs. Based on newly established reference methods, current approaches and strategies for risk and life cycle assessment will be improved, modified and further developed, and their feasibility assessed by means of practical case studies.

I was not expecting to see Canada in there.