Gwyneth K. Shaw Photo
UMass Lowell researchers Candace Tsai and Michael Ellenbecker are pushing nanotechnology companies to adopt safer practices for handling the promising but largely unknown materials.
LOWELL, Mass. — From a brick building that symbolizes this industrial city’s 19th century heyday, Candace Tsai and Michael Ellenbecker are helping today’s cutting-edge manufacturers make their factories safer.
Just as workers in Lowell’s fabled mills faced illness from inhaling tiny cotton fibers, their 21st century counterparts at groundbreaking nanotechnology companies are contending with a tiny and largely unknown threat: super-small “nano” particles that make lots of products better but can get into lung tissue or even cells.
That’s where Tsai and Ellenbecker come in. They’re using research done in laboratories at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, to guide nanotech companies, most of them relatively small startups, toward protecting their employees from what are literally hidden dangers from the super-small particles used in their products.
Take, for example, carbon nanotubes, a promising technology for everything from steel to wire insulation. Like other engineered nanoparticles, the tubes take a familiar material — in this case, carbon — and shrink it to the molecular level. The resulting material can be added to other substances to create a superstrong composite, or spun into fibers that aren’t just durable but also conduct heat and electricity.
But there’s one major problem: some types of CNTs, as they’re known, act more like minuscule fibers, and can get into human lungs when they’re dispersed into the air. And they’re so small that a worker handling the material can’t see how many she’s inhaling.
Scientists don’t know a lot about many nanoparticles, but they know enough to be cautious. Government regulation may be a long way off, leaving a void that many are eager to fill.
“Our philosophy is, until we know more about the toxicity, we can’t really allow unfettered exposure,” Ellenbecker said.
Tsai is a scientist in UMass Lowell’s Department of Work Environment. Ellenbecker is a professor in the same department, as well as the director of the Toxic Use Reduction Institute.
In her work, Tsai has been able to demonstrate that nanoparticles, such as CNTs, are released during the use of industrial equipment that was designed to protect workers from other hazards, such as fume hoods, which use an air flow to direct a dangerous agent away from a technician.
In one example (shown in the video), particles burst out of a safety cabinet when the worker pulled his hands out quickly. However, if that same worker acts more slowly and deliberately, very few particles are released. Some of the same techniques can make fume-hood work safer, Tsai said.
The work started with university faculty and student researchers, who needed a safer environment. Now Tsai and Ellenbecker are sharing the recommendations and techniques with manufacturers. Among the companies they’ve visited is Nanocomp Technologies, Inc. of Concord, N.H., which is working on a number of military applications for its CNT products.
Typically, Tsai and Ellenbecker said, safeguarding workers can be done using existing techniques, such as respirators, protective clothing, and clean enclosures, that are modified to contain nanoparticles.
“We’re not saying you have to spend a million dollars to capture every last particle,” Ellenbecker said. “But if you can stop 98 percent of the particles … it’s better than doing nothing to address the toxicity.”
But many companies haven’t taken that step, they said.
Tsai remembers one company, which she didn’t name, that she visited several years ago. The company was using large amounts of a powder that contained nanoparticles — and having workers cart open bags of the stuff around without any protective gear.
“It’s ridiculous — there was such high exposure for just this basic task!” Tsai said.
Tsai and Ellenbecker will be busier now that the university’s Center for High-rate Nanomamanufacturing has signed on to partner with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which is drafting some rules for workplace exposure to nanoparticles.
“Sometimes, NIOSH has a hard time coming in because they’re the government. If it’s the university coming in, they’re less worried about that.” Ellenbecker said. “It’s going to take them years to come up with the toxicology answers, probably decades. And that’s why we can’t wait.”
In addition to sharing tips for safety, Tsai is working on the next phase of her research: defining some standards for exposure and linking up to epidemiological studies that are beginning to monitor workers who deal with nanoparticles.
Tsai and Ellenbecker come to this work from very different backgrounds. She’s a petite Taiwan native who worked as an engineer and got a management degree before jumping into workplace safety issues. He also has an engineering background, but has spent his career in the industrial hygiene field, with a special focus on toxic substances.
Tsai was looking for a subject for her doctoral dissertation just as the potential toxicity of nanomaterials began to set off alarm bells. Working largely on her own, she built a method for detecting nanoparticles and started digging into safety gaps. She’s fiercely committed to her research, but just as intensely convinced that her findings should be known outside the small world of academia.
“It’s really, really important as a researcher — you have to think about how to apply it to industry,” she said. “I don’t like to do only theoretical work.”
One of those applications is happening at UMass Lowell, where students in the Department of Work Environment are reading some of her research to help them prepare for careers advising companies on worker safety. David Kriebel, the head of the department, said students are learning that, especially when it comes to nanotechnology, the “best practices” are going to keep evolving.
“We have to approach the question of the hazards much more cautiously, so there are some new challenges,” Kriebel said. “It’s not easy to know what to tell a student in training, but we’re doing our best.”
Kriebel, like Tsai and Ellenbacker, said nano companies have generally been quite open to safety advice. And in general, they’re all excited about nanotechnology’s promise, as long as the protections for workers, the public at large and the environment can keep up.
“We have to pay attention to it, we have to do the work, but we think it’s pretty clear that we can do this successfully,” Ellenbecker said. “The public has to be skeptical, and they have to hold our feet to the fire. The public has to know there’s concerns, but there’s also solutions in there.”