Tag Archives: Ag engineered nanoparticles (ENPs)

Nanosafety Cluster newsletter—excerpts from the Spring 2016 issue

The European Commission’s NanoSafety Cluster Newsletter (no.7) Spring 2016 edition is some 50 pp. long and it provides a roundup of activities and forthcoming events. Here are a few excerpts,

“Closer to the Market” Roadmap (CTTM) now finalised

Hot off the press! the Cluster’s “Closer to the Market” Roadmap (CTTM)  is  a  multi-dimensional,  stepwise  plan  targeting  a framework to deliver safe nano-enabled products to the market. After some years of discussions, several consultations of a huge number of experts in the nanosafety-field, conferences at which the issue of market implementation of nanotechnologies was talked  about,  writing  hours/days,  and  finally  two public consultation rounds, the CTTM is now finalized.

As stated in the Executive Summary: “Nano-products and nano-enabled applications need a clear and easy-to-follow human and environmental safety framework for the development along the innovation chain from initial idea to market and beyond that facilitates  navigation  through  the  complex  regulatory and approval processes under which different product categories fall.

Download it here, and get involved in its implementation through the Cluster!
Authors: Andreas Falk* 1, Christa Schimpel1, Andrea Haase3, Benoît Hazebrouck4, Carlos Fito López5, Adriele Prina-Mello6, Kai Savolainen7, Adriënne Sips8, Jesús M. Lopez de Ipiña10, Iseult Lynch11, Costas Charitidis12, Visser Germ13

NanoDefine hosts Synergy Workshop with NSC projects

NanoDefine  organised  the  2nd Nanosafety  Cluster  (NSC)  Synergy Workshop  at  the  Netherlands  House  for Education  and  Research  in Brussels  on  2nd  February  2016. The  aim  was  to  identify  overlaps and synergies existing between different projects that could develop into
outstanding cooperation opportunities.

One central issue was the building of a common ontology and a European framework for data management and analysis, as planned within eNanoMapper, to facilitate a closer interdisciplinary collaboration between  NSC projects and to better address the need for proper data storage, analysis and sharing (Open Access).

Unexpectedly, there’s a Canadian connection,

Discovering protocols for nanoparticles: the soils case
NanoFASE WP7 & NanoSafety Cluster WG3 Exposure

In NanoFASE, of course, we focus on the exposure to nanomaterials. Having consistent and meaningful protocols to characterize the fate of nanomaterials in different environments is therefore of great interest to us. Soils and sediments are in this respect very cumbersome. Also in the case of conventional chemicals has the development of  protocols for fate description in terrestrial systems been a long route.

The special considerations of nanomaterials make this job even harder. For instance, how does one handle the fact that the interaction between soils and nanoparticles is always out of equilibrium? How does one distinguish between the nanoparticles that are still mobile and those that are attached to soil?

In the case of conventional chemicals, a single measurement of a filtered soil suspension often suffices to find the mobile fraction, as long one is sure that equilibrium has been attained. Equilibrium never occurs in the case of  nanoparticles, and the distinction between attached/suspended particles is analytically less clear to do.

Current activity in NanoFASE is focusing at finding protocols to characterize this interaction. Not only does the protocol have to provide meaningful parameters that can be used, e.g. in modelling, but also the method itself should be fast and cheap enough so that a lot of data can be collected in a reasonable amount of time. NanoFASE is  in a good position to do this, because of its focus on fate and because of the many international collaborators.

For  instance,  the Swedish  Agricultural  University (Uppsala)  is  collaborating  with  McGill  University (Montreal, Canada [emphasis mine]), an advisory partner to NanoFASE, in developing the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] protocol for column tests (OECD test nr 312:  “Leaching in soil columns”). The effort is led by Yasir Sultan from Environment Canada and by Karlheinz Weinfurtner from the Frauenhofer institute in Germany. Initial results show the transport of nanomaterials in soil columns to be very limited.

The OECD protocol therefore does not often lead to measurable breakthrough curves that can be modelled to provide information about  nanomaterial  mobility  in  soils  and  most  likely  requires adaptations  to  account  for  the  relatively  low mobility  of  typical pristine nanomaterials.

OECD 312 prescribes to use 40 cm columns, which is most likely too long to show a breakthrough in the case of nanoparticles. Testing in NanoFASE will therefore focus on working with shorter columns and also investigating the effect of the flow speed.

The progress and the results of this action will be reported on our website (www.nanofase.eu).

ENM [engineered nanomaterial] Transformation in and Release from Managed Waste Streams (WP5): The NanoFASE pilot Wastewater Treatment Plant is up and running and producing sludge – soon we’ll be dosing with nanoparticles to test “real world” aging.

Now, wastewater,

ENM [engineered nanomaterial] Transformation in and Release from Managed Waste Streams (WP5): The NanoFASE pilot Wastewater Treatment Plant is up and running and producing sludge – soon we’ll be dosing with nanoparticles to test “real world” aging.

WP5 led by Ralf Kaegi of EAWAG [Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology] (Switzerland) will establish transformation and release rates of ENM during their passage through different reactors. We are focusing on wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), solid waste and dedicated sewage sludge incinerators as well as landfills (see figure below). Additionally, lab-scale experiments using pristine and well characterized materials, representing the realistic fate relevant forms at each stage, will allow us to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the transformation processes in waste treatment reactors. Our experimental results will feed directly into the development of a mathematical model describing the transformation and transfer of ENMs through the investigated reactors.

I’m including this since I’ve been following the ‘silver nanoparticle story’ for some time,

NanoMILE publication update: NanoMILE on the air and on the cover

Dramatic  differences  in  behavior  of  nano-silver during  the  initial  wash  cycle  and  for  its  further dissolution/transformation potential over time depending on detergent composition and form.

In an effort to better relate nanomaterial aging procedures to those which they are most likely to undergo during the life cycle of nano-enhanced products, in this paper we describe the various transformations which are possible when exposing Ag engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) to a suite of commercially available washing detergents (Figure 1). While Ag ENP transformation and washing of textiles has received considerable attention in recent years, our study is novel in that we (1) used several commercially available detergents allowing us to estimate the various changes possible in individual homes and commercial washing settings; (2) we have continued  method  development  of  state  of  the  art nanometrology techniques, including single particle ICP-MS, for the detection and characterization of ENPs in complex media; and (3) we were able to provide novel additions to the knowledge base of the environmental nanotechnology research community both in terms of the analytical methods (e.g. the first time ENP aggregates have been definitively analyzed via single particle ICP-MS) and broadening the scope of “real world” conditions that should be considered when understanding AgENP through their life cycle.

Our findings, which were recently published in Environmental Science and Toxicology (2015, 49: 9665), indicate that the washing detergent chemistry causes dramatic differences in ENP behavior during the initial wash cycle and has ramifications for the dissolution/transformation potential of the Ag ENPs over time (see Figure 2). The use of silver as an  antimicrobial  treatment  in  textiles  continues  to garner  considerable  attention.  Last  year  we  published  a manuscript in ACS Nano that considered how various silver treatments to textiles (conventional and nano) both release  nano-sized  material  after  the  wash  cycle  with  similar chemical  characteristics.  That  study  essentially conveyed that multiple silver treatments would become more similar through the product life cycle. Our newest  work expands this by investigating one silver ENP under various washing conditions thereby creating more varied silver products as an end result.

Fascinating stuff if you’ve been following the issues around nanotechnology and safety.

Towards the end of the newsletter on pp. 46-48, they list opportunities for partnerships, collaboration, and research posts and they list websites where you can check out job opportunities. Good Luck!