Multimodal characterisation of nanomaterials in the environment

工程纳米材料(ENM)存在于许多消费品中，包括化妆品和个人卫生用品。在柴油添加剂中也发现了纳米材料，以提高燃料效率。这些材料会与环境接触，例如，如果它们被冲下水槽，或者如果它们变成空气，然而，我们目前不知道它们是否危险，也没有法规来控制它们的释放或处理。环境中ENM的生命周期尚不清楚，这一领域存在很大的知识空白。这是因为消费品中环氧乙烷的浓度和性质在很大程度上是未知的(或公司没有说明)。人们对ENM在废水和土壤中的行为或寿命知之甚少，因为监测这种行为极其困难，因为我们没有工具在非常复杂的环境中检测这些微小的物质。该项目将应用新的和复杂的实验表征工具来预测与使用含有氧化锌、银、二氧化钛和二氧化CeENM的选定消费产品相关的潜在环境风险。首要目标是评估ENM的关键特征(大小、化学等)。这可能会通过两个最主要的环境途径对环境造成破坏--从废水处理厂的废水到水域，以及从污水污泥到土壤。这些信息最终将为监管机构提供政策方面的指导，并向行业提供指导，指导如何设计“安全”的新能源管理类别，并在避免过度监管的同时减轻风险。避免过度监管是至关重要的，因为我们不想重蹈福岛核事故的覆辙，因为向监管机构和政府提出的风险太高，16万人被迫在没有需要的情况下重新安置。自那以来，这已导致1,599人死亡，因为流离失所的居民患有健康问题、酗酒和高自杀率。我们的团队在开发在复杂环境中跟踪这些纳米材料的独特技术方面有着广泛的记录，并将应用他们在该领域的知识来解决这一极其相关的问题。该项目的实验方法包括物理科学实验和毒理学方法，产生的结果改善了我们对潜在环境危害的有限理解。该项目产生的结果也将有助于我们对ENM的命运、运输、生物利用度和生态毒性的各个方面的非常有限的了解，并将使我们能够回答这样的问题：“有毒剂量的ENM能否到达生物体，或者这些浓度在接触有机体时可以忽略不计？”，“如果它们是有毒的，是否有可能重新设计ENM，使其不存在风险”，“纳米材料是否溶解或改变其在环境中的化学并最终解毒，以及这在不同的纳米材料之间有何不同？”“哪些纳米材料构成了最大的风险，以及我们如何在没有过度预防性监管的情况下将这些危险材料的环境和健康风险降至最低”。这一多方面的战略将在了解环境中环境中环境保护物质的命运方面取得重大进展，以指导政策监管，同时避免不必要的过度监管，并最终指导这些材料的安全开发，用于未来的商业开发。

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are found in many consumer products including cosmetics and personal hygiene goods. Nanomaterials are also found in additives for diesel fuels to improve fuel efficiency. These materials will come into contact with the environment, for example, if they are washed down the sink, or if they become airbourne, however we currently have no idea about whether they are hazardous or not and regulations are not in place to control their release or treatment. The life cycle of ENMs in the environment is not known and there exist large knowledge gaps in this field. The reason for this is that the concentrations and properties of ENMs in consumer products are largely unknown (or not indicated by companies). Very little is known about the behaviour or lifetime of ENMs in the water effluent and soils as it's extremely hard to monitor this behaviour, as we do not have the tools to detect these tiny materials in very complex environments. This project will apply new and sophisticated experimental characterization tools for predicting potential environmental risks associated with the use of selected consumer products incorporating ZnO, Ag, TiO2 and CeO2 ENMs. An overarching goal is to evaluate which are the critical charateristics of ENMs (size, chemistry etc.) which may cause damage to the environment through two of the most predominant environmental pathways - from the effluent of a waste water treatment plant to waters and also from sewage sludge to soils. This information will ultimately to provide guidance to regulators on policy and to industry about how to design "safe" classes of ENMs and mitigate against risk, while avoiding overregulation. Avoiding overregulation is vital, as we do not want to re-experience what happened e.g. at Fukushima, where 160,000 people were forced to relocated without need, since the risk presented to regulators and the government was too high. This has since resulted in 1,599 deaths, as the displaced residents are suffering from health problems, alcoholism and high rates of suicide.Our team has an extensive track record in developing unique techniques to track these nanomaterials in complex environments and will apply their knowledge of this field to tackle this extremely pertinent concern. The projects experimental approaches include both physical science experiments and toxicological approaches, generating results to improve our limited understanding of the potential environmental hazards. The results generated from the project will also contribute to our very limited knowledge on various aspects of the fate, transport, bioavailability, and ecotoxicity of ENMs and will allow us to answer questions such as "can toxic doses of ENMs reach organisms or are these concentrations negligible at the point of exposure to the organism?", "if they are toxic, is it possible to re-engineer ENMs such that they do not present a risk", "do the nanomaterials dissolve or change their chemistry in the environment and ultimately detoxify and how does this vary between the different nanomaterials?", "which nanomaterials present the greatest risk and how do we minimise the environmental and health risks of these hazardous materials without overly precautionary regulations". This multifaceted strategy will make a major development in understanding the fate of ENMs in the environment to guide policy regulation whilst avoiding unnecessary overregulation, and ultimately guide the safe development of these materials for future commercial exploitation.