The health and safety hazards of nanomaterials include the potential toxicity of various types of nanomaterials, as well as fire and dust explosion hazards. Because nanotechnology is a recent development, the health and safety effects of exposures to nanomaterials, and what levels of exposure may be acceptable, are subjects of ongoing research. Of the possible hazards, inhalation exposure appears to present the most concern, with animal studies showing pulmonary effects such as inflammation, fibrosis, and carcinogenicity for some nanomaterials. Skin contact and ingestion exposure, and dust explosion hazards, are also a concern.
Guidance has been developed for hazard controls that are effective in reducing exposures to safe levels, including substitution with safer forms of a nanomaterial, engineering controls such as proper ventilation, and personal protective equipment as a last resort. For some materials, occupational exposure limits have been developed to determine a maximum safe airborne concentration of nanomaterials, and exposure assessment is possible using standard industrial hygiene sampling methods. An ongoing occupational health surveillance program can also help to protect workers.
Background
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at the atomic scale to create materials, devices, or systems with new properties or functions, with potential applications in energy, healthcare, industry, communications, agriculture, consumer products, and other sectors. Nanomaterials have at least one primary dimension of less than 100 nanometers, and often have properties different from those of their bulk components that are technologically useful. The classes of materials of which nanoparticles are typically composed include elemental carbon, metals or metal oxides, and ceramics. According to the Woodrow Wilson Center, the number of consumer products or product lines that incorporate nanomaterials increased from 212 to 1317 from 2006 to 2011. Worldwide investment in nanotechnology increased from $432 million in 1997 to about $4.1 billion in 2005.
Because nanotechnology is a recent development, the health and safety effects of exposures to nanomaterials, and what levels of exposure may be acceptable, is not yet fully understood. Research concerning the handling of nanomaterials is underway, and guidance for some nanomaterials has been developed. As with any new technology, the earliest exposures are expected to occur among workers conducting research in laboratories and pilot plants, making it important that they work in a manner that is protective of their safety and health.
A risk management system is composed of three parts. Hazard identification involves determining what health and safety concerns are present for both the nanomaterial and its corresponding bulk material, based on a review of safety data sheets, peer-reviewed literature, and guidance documents on the material. For nanomaterials, toxicity hazards are the most important, but dust explosion hazards may also be relevant. Exposure assessment involves determining actual routes of exposure in a specific workplace, including a review of which areas and tasks are most likely to cause exposure. Exposure control involves putting procedures in places to minimize or eliminate exposures according to the hierarchy of hazard controls. Ongoing verification of hazard controls can occur through monitoring of airborne nanomaterial concentrations using standard industrial hygiene sampling methods, and an occupational health surveillance program may be instituted.
A recently adopted risk management method is the Safe by design (SbD) approach. It aims to eliminate or reduce risks of new technologies including nanotechnology, at the design stage of a product or production process. Anticipation of risks is challenging because some risks could emerge only after a technology is implemented (at later stages in the innovation process). In the later cases, the application of other risk management strategies based on non-design principles need to be applied. It considers the purposes and constrains for implementation of SbD approaches in the industrial innovation process and on the basis of those, establish optimal workflows to identify risks and propose solutions to reduce or mitigate them as early as possible in the innovation process called Safe by Design strategies.