NPL involved in European nanosafety
Two key projects of the EU's NanoSafety Cluster, NanoValid and MARINA, were launched on 1 November 2011 with a joint budget of €18.6 million. The aims of the two large-scale integrated projects are aligned and focus on the development of reference methods and materials for life cycle analysis, exposure, hazard identification, and risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials.
NPL is one of the key partners in MARINA, carrying out work on Reference Materials and Reference Methods for Nanomaterial Characterisation. Both projects will run for four years (2011-2015). MARINA is coordinated by Dr Lang Tran (Institute of Occupational Medicine) and involves a total of 47 partners. NanoValid is coordinated by Dr Rudolf Reuther (Nordmiljö AB) with a consortium of 29 partners.
Rudolf Reuther of NanoValid explains the significance of the two projects:
"Both MARINA and NanoValid individually own the critical expertise and resources to trigger real scientific step changes in the development of reference methods and materials to reliably manage exposure and possible risks of engineered nanomaterials. As a result, the cooperation of the two EU FP7 'flagship' projects will have an enormous impact on the integration of the European nanosafety research landscape and drive forward the establishment of a special risk culture to support real future technical break-through, exciting new technical innovations and the sustainability of nanomaterials along their whole life cycle."
In order to ensure the optimum outcome and cost benefit to the European citizen, the partners of the two projects will collaborate closely. In this early phase, the key component of collaboration will be in sharing information and physical samples of the key nanomaterials and nanoparticles under investigation in each project. As the project progresses, the exchange of experimental results and expert discussion between partners will become increasingly important. The projects will also have a common dissemination and exploitation strategy and interaction with the EU's NanoSafety Cluster.
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Find out more about NPL's analysis of nanomaterials in the environment research in this area.