US National Nanotechnology Initiative holds Second Quantitative Estimate of Exposure to Nanomaterials Conference (QEEN II) Oct 9-10

Three members of the Vireo team participated in the second NNI QEEN II conference in Washington, DC. Jo Anne Shatkin, as well as new team members Dr. Shaun Clancy, and Cassidy Pomeroy-Carter were part of the planning and coordination of the conference, organizing panel discussions on exposure to nanomaterials in food and food contact items, and stakeholder perspectives, respectively. Our collaborators from NIST and American University gave a poster presentation about their efforts to develop a novel detection approach for cellulose nanomaterials in biological matrices – Post-doc Ilahaben Patel did a great job on the poster!

Over the two days, participants discussed what we know about exposure to nanomaterials since QEEN 1 in 2015 and priorities for remaining knowledge gaps. A rewarding development was that the discussion often focused on life cycle considerations in risk assessment; Vireo developed and uses the Nano Life Cycle Risk Assessment to develop testing strategies and safety roadmaps for commercialization.