Nanotechnology allows for the manipulation of materials at the nanoscale, which leads to advances in diverse technologies such as electronics, energy, environmental remediation, medicine, security and space.
The novel properties associated with engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) entails both opportunities and potential health and safety risks due to lack of knowledge on their interactions with biological systems and the environment. Currently, there are major knowledge gaps in understanding and predicting the potential risks posed by ENMs.
Adding to this uncertainty is the fact that minor physical and chemical manipulations of a small class of parent ENMs can generate a wide variety of particles having unique characteristics, which makes it difficult for innovators and regulators to predict toxicity.
The aim of this special issue is to assess the state-of-the-art understanding of the health and safety aspects of ENMs with special emphasis on their physical and chemical characteristics. These efforts include development of reliable and reproducible test systems to predict toxicity and health effects of ENMs currently in use, using both in vitro and in vivo approaches, and integrating this data towards developing a paradigm for predicting the health and safety risks associated with ENMs.
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:
- Research strategy for establishing the health and safety implications of ENMs
- ENM design and characterisation
- Reliability and reproducibility of biological outcomes
- Rational design of studies including routes of exposure and health effects prediction
- Dosing/animal and human and in vitro studies
- Development of reliable, computational predictive risk assessment models for nanomaterial toxicity and design of safer second generation ENMs
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 31 January, 2012
Communication of peer reviews to authors: 30 April, 20112
Deadline for revised manuscripts: 31 June, 2012
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