Friends and Colleagues, Please join us for a presentation you won't want to miss! This month we welcome Dr. Fionna Mowat of Exponent for a presentation on a subject that will be increasingly critical for safety professionals to understand: Nanomaterials.
Don't forget that you are welcome to join our speaker for dinner before the meeting, see details in meeting announcement below. **************************************** IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society Santa Clara Valley Chapter Nanotechnology – a little bit of this, a little bit of that … … and a lot of safety issues? Find out a little bit more! Meeting Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 Dinner: 5:45 – 7:00 p.m. Socialize with your colleagues and tonight's speakers at: El Torito Mexican Restaurant, 2950 Lakeside Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408-727-4426) -- just two blocks north of the meeting site. No RSVP required. Program: 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. No admission charge. Open to the public. Topic: Nanomaterials: Naughty or Nice? This presentation about nanomaterial health and safety issues emphasizes how to proactively engineer safety into products and reduce potential exposures and health risk. Nanomaterials contain extremely small-scale (<100 nm) particles that generate unique properties. Beneficial applications of nanomaterials already have appeared in fields such as medicine and environmental remediation, and nano-scale materials have been used in the semiconductor industry for years. Nanomaterials research is active at academic institutions, industry and regulatory agencies. Environmental health and safety, exposure and toxicity concerns about nanoparticles include their ability to become airborne because of their small size and to cross biological membranes and barriers. Even relatively inert substances may become more reactive, and thus toxic, because of small particle size and high total surface area, but toxicity cannot simply be predicted by size alone. Many factors help to determine exposure and relative toxicity, including chemical composition, particle shape, structure, and surface properties or coatings – as well as aggregation potential, surface charges, dosimetry, degree of containment, and susceptibility to wear. Speaker: Fionna S. Mowat, Ph.D. Dr. Fionna S. Mowat is a Principal Scientist for Exposure Assessment and Dose Reconstruction in Exponent's Health Sciences Group. She assesses exposure to various chemicals, mineral fibers, and nanoparticles in occupational settings and potential exposures from use (and misuse) of consumer products. Dr. Mowat has been involved in the design, conduct, and publication of tests to simulate historical exposures to products manufactured and used before industrial hygiene data were available. Dr. Mowat has reviewed products, such as personal care items, that contain mixed metal oxides. She presented a risk assessment framework for assessing exposures to nanomaterials in consumer products. Dr. Mowat also has reviewed the use of nanomaterials in environmental applications, such as groundwater clean up, and has published abstracts about environmental consequences. Meeting Site: Applied Materials, Bowers Café, 3090 Bowers Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95054 (map: http://www.scvemc.org/scv2003meetmap.gif ) Chair: Steve Baldwin, [email protected] Vice-Chair: Roberto Pasos, [email protected] Treasurer: Mark Montrose, [email protected] Secretary: Gary Eldridge, [email protected] Visit our chapter website: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/pses/index.html - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
