Nanotechnology site developed by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is looking to the future and has developed a website that provides specific instruction and risk assessment tools for nanotechnology.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) is working closely with Safe Work Australia and other state and territory health and safety regulators to provide guidance on safe nanotechnology work practices.

Queensland is the only state that is a formal member of an international working group participating with the International Standards Organisation and the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development in developing safety standards for workplaces using nanotechnology.

The work involves liaising closely with the Queensland University of Technology and Safe Work Australia to develop Australia's first methodology for measurement of exposure to nanoparticles in the workplace.

Queensland also chairs a national group looking at developing appropriate measuring capabilities for nanotechnology particles in the air.

The growth of the nanotechnology sector presents many benefits, but it also presents contemporary health and safety issues. It includes molecular manufacturing - building things one atom or molecule at a time to produce manufactured nanoparticles.

Although the widespread manufacture of nanomaterials is still some years off in Queensland, items already for sale in the state that may incorporate nanotechnology include tennis rackets, bicycles and solar panels.

The science is unclear about the potential health effects of nanotechnology particles in general. However, there are concerns that the very small size of nanoparticles make them likely to penetrate into the respiratory system and organs. Fibrous-shaped carbon nanoparticles are also suspected of causing damage to the mesothelium lining of the lung.

Safe Work Australia recently published two reports on engineered nanomaterials, including the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's Engineered Nano-materials: investigating substitution and modification options to reduce potential hazards. This report assessed the current substitution and modification practices used in Australian nanotechnology activities.

The Monash University Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health was also commissioned to undertake research for its Engineered Nano-materials: feasibility of established exposure standards and using control banding in Australia. It found benchmark exposure levels are precautionary limits that can be assigned to groups of nanomaterials. These levels may be adopted as guidance, then converted into National Exposure Standards.