It is currently integrated into the work program of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OCED), establishing test guidelines within the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN).
The method is twofold - namely occupational exposure, and the ATEX risk.
Regarding dustiness
A very important proportion of industrial products exists in powdered form at some stage during their manufacturing cycle (a figure of 80% has been put forth). Most of the time, this powder is manipulated, weighed, decanted, transported, etc. These operations create a suspension of a part of the product (“aerosolization”) which has economic, but also safety, health and environmental consequences: loss of material, dispersion throughout the site (hence contamination of the means of production of the product), risk of accident at the process level, exposure of personnel, release into the environment.
The work aims to develop a method for measuring this suspension capacity (called “dustiness” in English).
This work is part of the efforts initiated by about ten European countries (with Germany as coordinator) through an initiative called “The Malta Initiative”. It is supported by the European Commission via funding for the gov4nano research project, which has just started and which will last 4 years.
For more information about nano safety at the OCDE site, visit: http://www.oecd.org/fr/securitechimique/nanosecurite
