Environmental Nanosafety
Research activities span from characterization of engineered nanomaterials in products and environmental media along life cycle stages to human health as well as ecological risk assessment in order to support sustainable manufacturing and use of nanotechnologies. The aim is to improve our understanding of release, fate and transport of engineered nanomaterials and related exposure scenarios as well as toxicological effects to human health as well as the environment, and to develop and apply adequate methodologies for a sound risk assessment.
Non-conventional ways of addressing potential risks (e.g., Weight of Evidence approaches, Expert Elicitation, Multi Criteria Decision Analysis techniques) are adopted, thus taking into account the deep uncertainties that currently pervade every step of the risk assessment procedure, especially when applied to nanomaterials, and implemented into user-friendly software-based decision support systems.