Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology

Natural and incidental nanomaterials are ubiquitous in the environemnt and their impacts must be considered relative to manufactured nanomaterials.

The goals of Core B are to 1) determine characteristics of natural and incidental nanomaterials in the environment, 2) to identify the principal nanometer-scale structural and reactivity differences between natural and synthetic nanomaterials of the same chemical composition, and 3) to refine methods for measuring NPs in the environment. Using asymmetric flow field flow fractionation (AF4) and SEC with in-line DLS, QELS, and ICP-MS detectors in addition to analytical TEM, and x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy the abundance of natural NPs in various environments are characterized and methods developed to “trace” NPs in the environment to their most likely origin.