Vireo Advisors Founder and President Jo Anne Shatkin received the 2019 TAPPI Nanotechnology Division Leadership and Service Award in Chiba, Japan, on June 5 in recognition of her contributions toward establishing the safety of cellulose nanomaterials.

In a testament to the exciting commercial opportunities that exist for cellulose nanomaterials, the University of Maine Process Development Center (PDC) recently reported that since 2013 they have distributed over 4 tons of cellulose nanomaterials (CNM) to over 600 organizations worldwide, including over 300 companies and 275 universities.

Manufacturers in Japan are among the first to produce commercial products using cellulose nanofiber (CNF), a material created from biomass which has a low environmental impact in its production and disposal.

The findings of Vireo Advisors’ analysis of data availability for creating Safety Data Sheets (SDS) was published last week in TAPPI Journal.