10th SNO Conference
The Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization (SNO) is a permanent non-profit, worldwide professional corporation that provides the infrastructure to carry out its mission of research, education, and responsibility related to both sustainability and nanotechnology. It is comprised of individuals and institutions that are engaged in:
- Research and development of sustainable nanotechnology
- Implications of nanotechnology for Environment, Health, and Safety
- Advances in nanoscience, methods, protocols and metrology
- Education and understanding of sustainable nanotechnology
- Applications of nanotechnology for sustainability
This year, the 10th SNO conference took place virtually on 3-5 November 2021 with the main aim of understanding where nanotechnology is making the most significant environmental and sustainable scientific breakthroughs and demonstrate how applications using nanotechnology can be sustainably developed going forward. The conference counted with sessions on following topics:
- Risk Governance
- Occupational and Environmental Exposure Assessment
- Food and Agriculture
- Water, air, soil treatment and remediation
- Fate and transport
- Ecotoxicology and Human toxicology
- Education
- Green/Sustainable nanomaterials
- Nanosensors
- Nanomedicine
- Rising Stars in Sustainable Nanotechnology
On November 4th, within the session “OEH/Green Nanomaterials/Risk Assessment” and under the title “Assessing exposure and hazard of industrially relevant advanced materials by developing safe by design (SbD) strategies: perovskites case study”, Veronica di Battista, from BASF, gave an overview on the HARMLESS project and presented its planned goals outside the European community, when it comes to the evaluation of potential exposure and hazard of advanced nanostructured materials. That is, to develop safer-by-design versions of industrially relevant materials, highlighting that safer by design is not only taking into account classical risk assessment but also prospective hazard at the design stage, and hence the IATA-based assessment by screening (phys-chem and in-vitro) methods. Preliminary results on perovskites materials intended to be used in three-way catalysis have been shown, giving insights into the leaching behavior of the heavy metals present in their structure.
