Carbon nanotubes and other carbon nanomaterials are now, and are expected to remain, the most commonly used nanomaterial in industrial applications. They are also used in a wide variety of consumer products and that trend is expected to continue. Early research has already raised questions, if not concerns, about the environmental, health, and safety risks of some carbon nanomaterials, such as single-and multi-walled carbon nanotubes.
Twelve (12) leading companies involved in the commercialization of carbon nanomaterials and products recently formed the NanoSafety Consortium for Carbon ("NCC") to address nanoscale carbon environmental, health, and safety issues related to the responsible commercialization of their products.
The NCC website is designed to inform the public about its activities.
For example:
NCC Purpose: To address global legal, regulatory, environmental, health, and safety (“EHS”) issues related to the responsible commercialization of its members’ nano-related products. NCC may conduct or sponsor such EHS research projects as approved by NCC's Management Committee, and may also take all steps necessary to advance NCC's positions on EHS issues related to carbon nanomaterials.
NCC Objectives:
- Pursue the potential development of a mutually agreeable testing regime between NCC and US EPA for a suite of representative carbon nanomaterials to fulfill the toxicity testing requirements of any TSCA consent order applicable to NCC's members' existing carbon nanomaterials.
- As part of any overall representative testing regime, develop a mutually agreeable approach between NCC and US EPA which allows a reasonable range of modification to members’ products without requiring renewed comprehensive toxicity testing.
- Provide EPA with NCC's perspective on the scope of any data-call-ins or testing rules which might be issued for carbon nanomaterials under Sections 4 or 8 of TSCA.
NCC Advisory Board
The impressive NCC Scientific Advisory Board consists of a number of well-respected scientists in the field of nanotechnology risk assessment, including Dr. Vince Castranova, Chief of the Pathology and Physiology Research Branch, NIOSH Health Effects Laboratory Division; Dr. Charles Geraci, Coordinator of the NIOSH Nanotechnology Research Center (responsible for the development of workplace guidelines, including the NIOSH document “Approaches to Safe Nanotechnology”); Dr. Bettye L. (Smith) Maddux, a U.S. Delegate on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) US Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the International Organization on Standardization’s (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) on Nanotechnologies 229; Jeff Morse, Managing Director of the National Nanomanufacturing Network and previously a Senior Scientist in the Center for Micro and Nano Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Dr. Günter Oberdörster, Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester and a well-known and influential nanoparticle research scientist.
Membership: Membership in NCC is open to any business entity actively pursuing the commercialization of carbon nanomaterials or products.
For non-members, a resource at the NCC site is its up-to-date In Vivo Toxicology Bibliography for Nanoscale Carbon, containing references and abstracts to relevant research from 1990 to the present.
Check it out.