A tool for ranking nanomaterial risks for the US military

Michael Berger in his Jan. 6, 2015 Nanowerk Spotlight article describes a new nanomaterial safety tool developed for the US military (Note: A link has been removed),

Military organizations around the world, especially in the U.S., have been quicker than most to appreciate the potential of nanotechnology. More money is being spent on nanotechnology research for military applications than for any other area (read more: Military nanotechnology – how worried should we be?).

Public releases about military nanotechnology research and development activities are full about sensors, batteries, wound care, filtration systems, smart fabrics, and lighter, stronger, heat-resistant nanocomposite materials etc. Naturally, nanomaterial safety has become an important issue for military organizations as well.

“Assessing the potential human health and environmental risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) within the context of the applications and products in which they are incorporated continues to be an extremely challenging endeavor,”Khara D. Grieger, PhD, an Environmental Risk Assessor and research scientist at RTI International, tells Nanowerk. “Given the challenges of developing sufficient data that would be required for traditional risk assessment frameworks, risk assessors are continuing to refine their methods and techniques to perform risk assessments using combined quantitative and qualitative frameworks for ENMs, resulting in various alternatives for risk analysis.”

The use of risk ranking tools may be particularly advantageous to prioritize materials or products according to their risk potential, i.e., identify the ‘riskiest’ ENMs or nanotechnology products, for example, for further research or investigation. This may be useful especially in cases of resource and time constraints.

Here’s a graph, from Geiger’s paper, ranking various engineered nanomaterials (ENM),

©Springer Science+Business Media

©Springer Science+Business Media

Berger notes,

The scientific core of the paper focuses on the development and application of a relative risk ranking tool that ranks engineered nanomaterials as well as the applications in which they are embedded (in this case, Army materiel) relevant for worker or soldier health.

“The development of this tool is important because it not only takes into account the physicochemical characteristics of ENMs but also the characteristics of the equipment in which they are embedded, relevant for current, real-world scenarios involving ENMs,” explains Grieger. “The results from this work may be used to help prioritize additional research, such as in-depth risk evaluations or further nanotoxicological research pertaining to the highest ranked ENMs, materiel, or ENM–materiel pairs.”

She adds that the fundamental methodology and risk ranking algorithm developed in the ranking tools may be applicable to other occupational and environmental settings involving ENMs and therefore easily translated to other application scenarios.

I encourage you to read Berger’s article in its entirety. Also, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A relative ranking approach for nano-enabled applications to improve risk-based decision making: a case study of Army materiel by Khara D. Grieger, Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, Eric S. Money, Mark W. Widder, William H. van der Schalie, Stephen M. Beaulieu, and Donna Womack. Environment Systems and Decisions December 2014 DOI 10.1007/s10669-014-9531-4

This paper is behind a paywall.

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