Occupational Health and Safety Issues

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As reported in our February 5, 2020, blog item, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH®) Threshold Limit Values for Chemical Substances (TLV®-CS) Committee included carbon nanotubes on its 2020 list of chemical substances and other issues under study.  Being placed on the under study list indicated that the…

On July 23, 2020, the European Union (EU) Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON) published a Nanopinion entitled “Material manufacturing from nano-scaled particles:  moving forward using plants” by Dr. Blaise Tardy, Research Fellow, Bio-Based Colloids and Materials Research Group — Aalto University in Finland.  Dr. Tardy notes that bio-based nanomaterials such as nanocellulose “have shown…

The July 2020 issue of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Environmental Factor includes an item on a new database that facilitates nanomaterial research.  According to the article, NIEHS grantees constructed PubVINAS, “a large database of structure, chemical property, and activity information on 705 nanomaterials, covering 11 material types.”  The article…

On June 25, 2020, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published a Nanotechnology Research Center (NTRC) Program Performance One-Pager (PPOP).  NTRC conducts research to understand the potential effects on human health of exposure to engineered nanomaterials (ENM) and develops methods to control or eliminate exposures.  According to the PPOP, NTRC’s accomplishments include…

On June 30, 2020, from 9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m. (EDT), the European Union (EU) NanoSafety Cluster will hold a webinar on “Immune response from occupational exposure to CNTs and nanofibres.”  The following speakers will discuss work at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health…

The European Union (EU) Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON) announced on May 20, 2020, that a recent study has analyzed existing research on whether nanomaterials used in consumer products and at workplaces are absorbed through the skin.  The study was commissioned by EUON and carried out by the RPA consortium of Triskelion and the Dutch National…

On May 4, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published proposed significant new use rules (SNUR) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN) and are subject to orders issued by EPA pursuant to TSCA.  85 Fed. Reg. 26419.  The SNURs require persons who…

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has posted two posters from the NIOSH Nanotechnology Research Center (NTRC) on 3D printing:  3D Printing with Filaments:  Health and Safety Questions to Ask and 3D Printing with Metal Powders:  Health and Safety Questions to Ask.  The posters provide health and safety questions with different…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a proposed rule on April 1, 2020, that would amend the significant new use rules (SNUR) for certain chemical substances that were the subject of a premanufacture notice (PMN) and a significant new use notice (SNUN), including functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) (generic).  85 Fed. Reg. 18173.  This action…

On March 9, 2020, the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) posted a podcast entitled “The Hazards of Nanomaterials and How to Control Exposure.”  CCOHS states that nanomaterials have many useful properties, but the same properties that make them desirable in manufacturing present unique potential safety hazards when workers are exposed…