NIOSH Plans to Support Implementation of WHO Guidelines to Protect Workers from Nanomaterials

On December 15, 2017, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) posted a blog item entitled “WHO Guidelines to Protect Workers from Nanomaterials.”  As reported in our December 13, 2017, blog item, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently published WHO Guidelines on Protecting Workers from Potential Risks of Manufactured Nanomaterials.  NIOSH Director John Howard, MD, describes the WHO Guidelines as “an important step in protecting workers worldwide from the potential risks of manufactured nanomaterials.”  Vladimir Murashov, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, NIOSH Office of the Director, chaired the Guideline Development Group.  NIOSH also contributed one of the eleven systematic reviews (Eastlake A, Zumwalde R, Geraci C.  “Can Control Banding be Useful for the Safe Handling of Nanomaterials? A Systematic Review.”  J Nanoparticle Res.) and participated in the external expert review.  The blog item states that NIOSH “plans to continue supporting this WHO effort at the guideline implementation phase, which will focus on turning these guidelines into practice.”