Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology

The Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT) was an early attempt to ensure that the exponential growth of nanotechnology is well ordered and does not impact the environment in adverse ways. The Center is thus an anticipatory response drawing upon lessons from previous technological innovations such as asbestos, DDT and chloroflurocarbons that were initially hailed as technological panaceas but were later found to have had serious environmental impacts. There are concerns that nanotechnology could be a similar double-edged sword.

The Center evaluates a vast array of nanomaterials—from natural, to manufactured, to those produced incidentally by human activities—and their potential environmental exposure, biological effects, and ecological consequences. Headquartered at Duke University, CEINT is a partnership between Duke (Pratt School of Engineering, Nicholas School of the Environment, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Trinity School of Arts and Sciences), Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University, Virginia Tech, the University of Kentucky, and Stanford University. CEINT academic collaborations in the United States also include on-going activities coordinated with faculty at Clemson, North Carolina State, Rice, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and North Carolina Central universities, researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) government labs, and with key international partners.

On the West Coast, the main headquarters of CEINT is at UCLA, where the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) serves as the major base of operations for CEINT, with a second major hub at University of California, Santa Barbara. Created in 2008 with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and EPA, CEINT performs fundamental research on the behavior of nanoscale materials in laboratory and complex ecosystems. This research encompasses all aspects of nanomaterial transport, fate and exposure, as well as ecotoxicological and ecosystem impacts. One of the key areas of CEINT expertise is in the development of risk assessment models that are expected to give investigators the proper tools to evaluate and assess extant and future concerns that may arise regarding the environmental implications of nanomaterials. The research focus at the University of California Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UCCIEN) is ensuring that nanotechnology is environmentally compatible and safe, and UC-CIEN has developed a broad-based predictive toxicology model premised on quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) as determined by looking at nanomaterial injury mechanisms at cellular, tissue, organism, and mesocosm levels.

Among the U.S. government agencies that the Center collaborates with are NIST, EPA, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory /U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the National Institute of Environmental [Page 79]Health Sciences. The Center works closely with a consortium of international partners, primarily functioning through a Groupement de Recheche Internationale (GDRI), headquartered at the European Center for Research and Education in Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE, Aix-en-Provence, France). This GDRI, the International Consortium for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (iCEINT) is funded by the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS), and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). Core CEINT institutions make up the U.S. partners for the GDRI. CEINT/GDRI researchers co-advise students, and participate in regular faculty and researcher exchanges.

...