The first comprehensive international survey of workplace safety practices in the burgeoning nanotechnology industry finds that many nanotech companies and laboratories believe nanoparticles—specks of matter that are smaller than living cells —may pose specific environmental and health risks for workers. The study was carried out by researchers at UC Santa Barbara under contract to the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON).

Survey data were collected this past summer from 64 organizations in North America, the European Union, Asia, and Australia. North American and Japanese respondents each represented 39 percent of those surveyed, with 17 percent from the European Union and 5 percent from Australia. About 80 percent of responses were from private-sector companies that are developing, or have developed, at least one nanomaterial product.

“This is an important study because it reinforces the perspective that there needs to be more information regarding the toxicology of new nanomaterials, and how they should be handled in the contexts of industry, consumers, and the environment,” said Patricia Holden, project principal investigator and associate professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

“Particles at the nanoscale take on entirely new physical properties, making their potential dangers to humans and the environment mostly unknown,” she said.

“The value of this study is that we brought together knowledge of academic and industry laboratory practices, toxicologic risk assessment, and social science approaches,” said study co-principal investigator Barbara Herr Harthorn, who also co-directs the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) at UCSB. “This allowed us to analyze a unique set of detailed data from around the globe, establishing baseline data for future studies, and (making) a first step toward developing safe handling guidelines for nanomaterials.”

The study was commissioned by ICON, a coalition of academic, industrial, governmental, and civil society organizations based at Rice University. “A Survey of Current Practices in the Nanotechnology Workplace” is available at <http://icon.rice.edu>.

Companies reported they are developing programs and procedures for mitigating risks to workers and consumers, according to the study. Yet, due in part to a lack of information regarding nanomaterials risks, these firms and labs currently follow conventional environmental health and safety practices when workers handle nanomaterials.

“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,” said Kristen M. Kulinowski, director of ICON.

Engineered nanomaterials are designed to take advantage of properties that emerge at the nanoscale, and nanotech workers typically face the greatest exposure risks from engineered nanomaterials. For example, in products containing nanomaterials in a plastic composite or other solid matrix, risks to consumers are believed to be minimal because the materials are locked up tight. But workers who handle nanomaterials in raw form are suspected to have more risk of exposure, though little specific information exists about potential harm.

A UCSB research team that included environmental scientists, sociologists, a corporate environmental management expert, and an anthropologist produced the survey and report. Among them were Magali Delmas, co-principal investigator and associate professor of corporate environmental management at Bren School, and co-principal investigator Richard Applebaum, professor of sociology and global and international studies, and Working Group co-leader at CNS. He commented, “This report is an excellent example of the fruits of collaboration across the ‘cultural divide’ that presumably separates social and physical scientists. Such collaborations, unfortunately, are all too rare in academia.”

Holden also co-advised four master’s students in this research as part of their group thesis. They included Bren graduate students Gina Gerritzen, Keith Killpack, Maria Mircheva, and Leia Huang. Sociology doctoral candidate Joe Conti also worked on the project.