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Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory

Widespread production and use of engineered nanomaterials in industrial and research settings raise concerns about their health impact in the workplace. In the last years, graphene-based nanomaterials have gained particular interest in many application fields. Among them, graphene nanoplatelets (GNP...

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Autores principales: Bellagamba, Irene, Boccuni, Fabio, Ferrante, Riccardo, Tombolini, Francesca, Marra, Fabrizio, Sarto, Maria Sabrina, Iavicoli, Sergio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466624/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32756523
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10081520
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author Bellagamba, Irene
Boccuni, Fabio
Ferrante, Riccardo
Tombolini, Francesca
Marra, Fabrizio
Sarto, Maria Sabrina
Iavicoli, Sergio
author_facet Bellagamba, Irene
Boccuni, Fabio
Ferrante, Riccardo
Tombolini, Francesca
Marra, Fabrizio
Sarto, Maria Sabrina
Iavicoli, Sergio
author_sort Bellagamba, Irene
collection PubMed
description Widespread production and use of engineered nanomaterials in industrial and research settings raise concerns about their health impact in the workplace. In the last years, graphene-based nanomaterials have gained particular interest in many application fields. Among them, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) showed superior electrical, optical and thermal properties, low-cost and availability. Few and conflicting results have been reported about toxicity and potential effects on workers’ health, during the production and handling of these nanostructures. Due to this lack of knowledge, systematic approaches are needed to assess risks and quantify workers’ exposure to GNPs. This work applies a multi-metric approach to assess workers’ exposure during the production of GNPs, based on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) methodology by integrating real-time measurements and personal sampling. In particular, we analyzed the particle number concentration, the average diameter and the lung deposited surface area of airborne nanoparticles during the production process conducted by thermal exfoliation in two different ways, compared to the background. These results have been integrated by electron microscopic and spectroscopic analysis on the filters sampled by personal impactors. The study identifies the process phases potentially at risk for workers and reports quantitative information about the parameters that may influence the exposure in order to propose recommendations for a safer design of GNPs production process.
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spelling pubmed-74666242020-09-14 Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory Bellagamba, Irene Boccuni, Fabio Ferrante, Riccardo Tombolini, Francesca Marra, Fabrizio Sarto, Maria Sabrina Iavicoli, Sergio Nanomaterials (Basel) Article Widespread production and use of engineered nanomaterials in industrial and research settings raise concerns about their health impact in the workplace. In the last years, graphene-based nanomaterials have gained particular interest in many application fields. Among them, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) showed superior electrical, optical and thermal properties, low-cost and availability. Few and conflicting results have been reported about toxicity and potential effects on workers’ health, during the production and handling of these nanostructures. Due to this lack of knowledge, systematic approaches are needed to assess risks and quantify workers’ exposure to GNPs. This work applies a multi-metric approach to assess workers’ exposure during the production of GNPs, based on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) methodology by integrating real-time measurements and personal sampling. In particular, we analyzed the particle number concentration, the average diameter and the lung deposited surface area of airborne nanoparticles during the production process conducted by thermal exfoliation in two different ways, compared to the background. These results have been integrated by electron microscopic and spectroscopic analysis on the filters sampled by personal impactors. The study identifies the process phases potentially at risk for workers and reports quantitative information about the parameters that may influence the exposure in order to propose recommendations for a safer design of GNPs production process. MDPI 2020-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7466624/ /pubmed/32756523 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10081520 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bellagamba, Irene
Boccuni, Fabio
Ferrante, Riccardo
Tombolini, Francesca
Marra, Fabrizio
Sarto, Maria Sabrina
Iavicoli, Sergio
Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title_full Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title_fullStr Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title_full_unstemmed Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title_short Workers’ Exposure Assessment during the Production of Graphene Nanoplatelets in R&D Laboratory
title_sort workers’ exposure assessment during the production of graphene nanoplatelets in r&d laboratory
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466624/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32756523
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10081520
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