NIA Projects
SAFETY ASSESSMENT:
NANEX - Development of Exposure Scenarios for Manufactured Nanomaterials
CNT - Life-Cycle Analysis - Research into the likelihood and possible pathway of human exposure via inhalation arising throughout the lifecycle of a selection of commercially available articles containing carbon nanotubes
NanoImaging - Detection of Engineered Nanomaterials in the Environment: Available techniques and potential for applied techniques from nanomedicine and nanotoxicology
BENEFITS OF NANOTECHNOLOGIES:
COMMUNICATION:
INGENIOUS - Public Communication & Applied Ethics of Nanotechnology
COMMERCIALISATION:
Nano2Market - Best Practices for IPR and Technology Transfer in Nanotechnology Development
MARKET-SPECIFIC R&D:
NanoHex - Transforming
the Future of Heat Management
RefNanoCLAYM
Lead-Sponsorship, Characterisation and Testing of Reference Nanoclay Materials within the OECD Sponsorship Programme
The RefNanoCLAYM Project is an NIA-initiated and -led public-private-partnership aiming to a naturally occurring clay (i.e. a bentonite) with regard to the endpoints agreed under the OECD WPMN Sponsorship Programme. The PPP's partners are renoun national measurement and testing laboratories, which characterise the physico-chemical properties of this commercially utilised bentonite, as well as those in commercially relevant media.
Environmental fate and ecotoxicological behaviour are investigates in a step-wise approach: In the first step, standard toxicity tests according to OECD test guidelines are proposed, while in the second step, adaptations of test protocols according to procedures elaborated for other Representative Manufacture Nanomaterials (RMNs) under the OECD WPMN Sponsorship Programme, will be considered.
A variety of terrestrial and aquatic test organisms will be selected to get information concerning potential ecotoxicological effects. Besides short-term tests according to the basic procedure used for chemicals testing, aquatic and terrestrial long-term tests are proposed.
The NIA holds the Lead-Sponsorship of the nano-Clay Consortium at the OECD WPMN Sponsorship Programme.
The nanomaterial used in the RefNanoCLAYM Project has been endorsed as a Principal Material under the OECD WPMN Sponsorship Programme; as NM-600 Bentonite, it is sub-sampled by and held at the European Repository of NM-Series of Representative Manufactured Nanomaterials.