Safety and Health Issues of Emerging Technologies at Work
hello and welcome to the second installment of the 2019 expanding research partnerships webinar series today's webinar topic is on occupational safety and health issues of emerging technologies my name is peter grandello and it is my pleasure to serve as the moderator for today's webinar this webinar will be conducted using adobe connect software the audio will be coming from your computer speakers if you require technical assistance from adobe connect please call 1-800-422-3623 this webinar is being recorded and will be posted on the website in a few weeks closed captioning is available connect windows the large main window on the upper left hand part of the monitor is the primary window for the presentation where you will be able to view the presenter slides in the upper right hand corner of your screen we provide additional notes for attendees including information for technical support and a link for live closed captioning the q a window for today's webinar we will only take written questions through the q a window when asking a question please provide the name of the presenters to whom the question is being asked and please avoid use of abbreviations or acronyms in your questions questions will be read in order they are received by the moderator after all the presentations have concluded the closed captioning viewer window will stream live captioning during this presentation just below the main window now i would like to introduce dr sarah feltner the associate director for research integration in the office of research integration thank you pete and welcome everyone good afternoon and good morning and welcome to our second webinar in the 2019 series of expanding research partnerships we have an exciting set of presentations today on the occupational safety and health issues of emerging technologies we're fortunate to have dr chuck geraisi associate director for emerging technologies at niosh and ms nicole neubacher research associate of nanohealth initiatives at the state university of new york polytechnic institute with us today as pete mentioned we're going to hold questions until the end of both presentations you are welcome to enter questions into the q a text box during the presentations but we will get to those questions in order at the end of both presentations and so without further ado um i'm going to ask dr geraci to join us and talk to us today about the niosh advanced manufacturing initiative and nanotechnology research center chuck hey thank you sarah it's a real pleasure to be here today as sarah mentioned i'll be covering two topics today we we had a a change in our agenda and i'll be expanding my discussion on uh advanced manufacturing or the emerging technologies initiative as well as an overview and some current information on our nanotechnology effort here at niosh but before i do that i want to make sure that when we talk about emerging technologies here at niosh it goes way beyond what most people think immediately when you say emerging technology it is not just the emerging advanced computer technology or capability in analyzing and gathering data it goes beyond the advances in computer technology into advances in material science and advances in manufacturing procedures and processes also called technologies all rolled up into a big issue or an initiative within the institute to evaluate how these changes in processes and in materials and also in computing technology are changing the workplace and whether there are any worker implications associated with with those changes so a lot of times you'll hear us talk here at nash about emerging technologies but within that we are really talking about advanced manufacturing processes and procedures new and advanced materials and and applications of those materials and some of the more advanced digital and automation technologies including robotics which was the topic of an earlier uh seminar in in this series so with that as as a backdrop what i'll start with is niosh's work in advanced manufacturing which is one of the emerging technologies we are addressing here at niosh and if we look at advanced manufacturing what what was it that got us involved in thinking about and understanding what's happening with advances in the manufacturing world and manufacturing technologies in the united states and and also around the world and we like many people came to the understanding that there was a big movement going on in industry going back almost 10 years and many of us have heard of this as either industry 4.0 or as the next industrial revolution or in some cases the fourth industrial revolution but the reality is a lot of change was going on in the workplace and niosh was aware of that change because of a lot of the work we were already doing in some of these advanced areas i'll identify specifically the nanotechnology program gave us some real insight into what was happening with advanced material science and how that advanced material science was being used to shape the future of a lot of manufacturing technologies and other materials applications in in many sectors in the united states so the formal look at advanced manufacturing was launched at niosh in january of this year even though we had already been doing quite a bit of work in a number of these emerging areas it was very important for us to start lining out what were the key areas of research we needed to do and how to go about doing that so we started lining that out in january of 2019 and our priorities in doing that are very much the priorities of the institute and the emission and and the mission of the institute we wanted to establish worker to determine workers safety and health burden is there going to be an implication or an impact on worker health and safety because of all these advances and all these changes taking place in the workplace and in other parts of of the overall economy we wanted to develop good information and disseminate that out as these technologies were evolving so that we niosh and the occupational safety and health community could be an element of good safe and responsible development and deployment of these technologies and we also wanted to see how we could improve safety practice training as a lot of these emerging technologies were being deployed so that was this is sort of the backdrop on it and we drew from a lot of our direct experience with nano materials and nano technology as they evolved over into the next generation of what we were seeing which are being referred to as advanced materials and advanced manufacturing technology so as i said a little earlier you'll hear me talk a lot about advanced manufacturing which is a rather broad and encompassing term but we came to understand it through a lot of our experience with some of the other earlier initiatives in the united states and we also became aware of and we are now a participant in a very large federal initiative in the united states known as the u.s advanced manufacturing initiative and that now runs parallel with several other large initiatives in the u.s and it's part of an overall move into what a lot of people are now referring to as the new economy or the green economy or the circular economy so we are now moving into many of these areas here in the united states and i've just gotta notice that some speakers cannot hear me i will try to adjust a little bit and if this is making it a little better i'll try to do that so when we look at using a materials perspective looking at advanced manufacturing and industry 4.0
and okay i'm looking at my messages here i'm going to speak up and make sure that my speakers are turned in the right direction or my microphone is turned in the right direction so what we learned about the evolution of many of these technologies we learned from a lot of work we were doing in nanoscale science or in nanotechnology so the basic science was used to develop a lot of new materials and a lot of information on new materials and those quickly moved into commercial applications that were known as advanced materials and so a lot of these advanced materials are nanomaterials in nature but they're also biological in nature and some of them are referred to as smart materials because they do have chemical or physical properties that allow them to interact with other material systems or to respond to external stimuli like light or heat or changes in ph and so a new generation of smart materials was coming out of that well these materials were now being used or looking for applications in commercial settings and that became more of a process driven application so the new materials being used in new ways to manufacture devices created the next layer on my little economic sphere here called the advanced manufacturing environment and what i what i want to portray here is that these all build into what we call the advanced industries that that are now evolving uh in our country and around the world making use of the new material science and new manufacturing technologies and these are all a part of industry 4.0 or the next industrial revolution so niosh put together a plan to evaluate a number of these elements within this new economic sphere and that led to our decision to have a very organized approach at advanced manufacturing and so there's a very basic question here that we have that we asked ourselves do these new materials and their processes bring new hazards to the workplace and that's a very fundamental question for us because it was the question we asked ourselves well over 15 years ago in our nanotechnology program and it's a very seemingly simple question but it's one that leads to a rather broad research effort within the institute now what i'd like to do here is on this slide is describe the advanced manufacturing technologies that are important to niosh's mission now a lot of economic forecasting organizations come out every year or every other year with their key technologies or most important technologies or important changes in in the world economy and these lists vary quite a bit from year to year but over the last 10 years there are a number of elements of these different lists that niosh looks at as being important to the workplace because they all have potential to either impact and in some cases benefit worker health and safety now you can see i have listed here advanced materials always shows up on these list of priority items for new or emerging or growing economies and within those advanced materials nanomaterials or nanotechnology will always be found but in the last five years there's been a growing presence for biological materials that are used as the basis for what's now known as biomanufacturing now biotechnology is not new but advances in biotechnology recently have really accelerated a move over to biology as a manufacturing technology and that's referred to rather commonly as being the green element of the new economy or the green economy and niosh is very interested in understanding does this move into a bio-based manufacturing environment represent new challenges or new hazards or even new opportunities for occupational safety and health and as i go through all of these elements in describing the program and describing the kind of work nash is doing i think it's important for us all to think about where are there opportunities for partnership or collaboration on these and niosh is certainly always looking for partnerships and opportunities to collaborate in developing research and results for any of these areas now the advanced biotechnology component of the bio nano or the bio based manufacturing has an important element now that is growing very rapidly and that is referred to as the synthetic biology element of bio-based manufacturing we've always been able to for at least about 20 years and some people would say 30 we've been able to either synthesize or change or edit or modify dna but now the techniques available to edit or modify dna and other molecular structures within cell systems is very readily available very efficient and very fast so now it is possible to modify molecular organisms and train them in so many words to do a particular process or synthesis for you and it serves as the starting point for many new biology-based manufacturing processes so a new green process may be more than just using bio feedstock as a starting material there may also be a biological organism involved in the biological processing of these materials to create new materials or old chemicals we are all familiar with but just done with a biology basis or a biological process another element that always shows up on these priority lists is additive manufacturing or 3d printing i'll get into a case study or two on additive manufacturing or 3d printing but the reality is that the way we now assemble and make things is changing dramatically additive manufacturing and also called 3d printing and i'll continue to say 3d printing because it's easier for me to say that throughout this seminar is really an advance in how materials can be joined together layer by layer to create a three-dimensional structure that prior to the use of additive or 3d printing techniques and technologies was was done by either melting or molding or combining materials in large scale and then trimming away waste additive manufacturing gives us the opportunity to do that one small very thin layer at a time to create the device so 3d printing has been identified as one of the key drivers of the factories of the future or the industries of the future now there's an awful lot of work being done on applying digitalization and advanced computing technologies to manufacturing but also to the entire supply chain so as we move into more automation and more immediate digital feedback and more tracking of materials and products and processes there's going to be a big change in the workplace and because there will be a big change in the workplace there will also be potential impact on worker health and safety both physical and medical health and safety but also psychosocial changes that are occurring in the workplace one of the other elements that's always listed on the economic priority list is sensing technology the ability to detect and sense and gather data on just about anything that happens with a material or a material process is now possible and it is serving the development of these technologies very well but it could also serve the occupational safety and health community very well if we can sense and detect every second of the life cycle of a given product or a material through its current physical and environmental conditions we should also be able to sense those same kinds of changes or the environment around the worker and be able to use that in near real time if not real-time fashion to understand and protect workers in their health and safety activities and then robotics you've already had a seminar on robotics robotics is growing very dramatically the use of many robots in industry and automated processes collaborative robots independently operating robots so there's an awful lot of work being done now within niosh in our center for occupational robotics research i'm not going to give a lot of detailed information on that today other than to identify that that is one of the key emerging technologies that that is driving a lot of work inside of niosh today so if we look at advanced manufacturing and this is a pictorial description of the landscape in the u.s today there are a number of key areas that are being supported for development and for promotion and deployment and they do make up a very large portion of the united states advanced manufacturing initiative so i've already talked about additive manufacturing as one of those key technologies but there's also an awful lot of work in a large investment going into development of new and modern functional fabrics the use of light versus electrons in electronics and data transmission and sensors bio fabrication bio fabrication meaning the actual use and fabrication of biological components now everybody's favorite image when we talk about biofabrication is this 3d printed ear that was done by several research groups but it's just a depiction of the kinds of material science and technology that's being developed and evolving right now in the modern workplace light weighting of materials is very important it's key to transportation especially aviation and the more material weight you can lose from a device the better and more more efficient it will be but part of that light weighting is the development of new and advanced materials and composites and metals and metal alloys and so the question back to niosh is is the development and the deployment of all of these new materials being done in a safe and responsible manner and should niash be involved in understanding potential worker exposures and controls and mitigations and then energy is a huge sector but clean energy especially photovoltaics and solar energy is a very large component of that part of the economy and niosh has been doing a lot of work with some key partners on understanding the materials involved and manufacturing technologies involved but also the basic health and safety elements of how does one go about deploying clean energy technologies and i've got an image here of some workers installing solar panels there are some key safety issues associated with installation of solar panels especially on elevated structures and then i do have the engineered biology image on here to highlight how the bio-based manufacturing or the use of biology as a manufacturing technology is one of the components of the advanced manufacturing initiative and just to bring some reality to all the things that i've said so far a collage of images of products that whether people recognize them or not are brought to us by some one or more of these advanced material or manufacturing technologies and they do range from things that you would think would qualify as part of the advanced manufacturing technology revolution in the country like computers and and electronic devices but also some other things that are a little stealthy in the fact that they do represent some advanced material applications like uh thin films and coatings and anti-corrosion systems so there's a pretty broad array of materials and products that are being deployed that are part of the advanced manufacturing initiative what's why should we as as occupational safety and health practitioners be concerned about this what's what's the need for the workforce well a study done recently by deloitte which is a rather respectable economic and forecasting organization took a look at what they referred to as the skills gap so that all of these new and emerging technologies will have the workers needed to support those those technologies well what we see from their report is that because of aging because of retirement because of entry into the workforce over the next uh seven to nine years close to five million workers will be needed to fill the jobs that will be created by or that will be changed by the deployment of many of these advanced manufacturing technologies well 4.6 million is the number they predict 4.6 million workers either doing new
jobs or doing different jobs or having to be upskilled or re-skilled is not an insignificant number so that caught our attention as well as the development of many of these new technologies so it'll be a combination of new materials and technologies combined with the need for workers to do that workers coming into the workforce or workers that'll have to be retrained in the workforce that says this is an important feature that niosh and the occupational safety and health community needs to surveil as as these technologies evolve so i wanted to do a little bit of a focus area on additive manufacturing and additive manufacturing or 3d printing and so one of the in addition to the number of workers that are needed a lot of economic forecasting tells us that additive manufacturing is a really big deal over the next year and a half or two it is projected that the global impact will be about 20 billion dollars now this is just the value of the uh 3d printing industry itself this is the cost of tools and materials and processes that are making the products this is not the total market value of the products that 3d printing will create that's probably double that number but what we looked at was over the next couple years this will be a this will have a huge economic impact around the world and niosh will play its role and the occupational safety and health community will play its role in supporting the safe and responsible development and deployment of this very key technology so some of the work that niosh has done getting into the meat of what is niosh doing in 3d printing and additive manufacturing we've been doing some lab work and some field work in in evaluating potential hazards of 3d printing and without going into a lot of detail on what are the various processes possible for 3d printing i gave an earlier description of think of this as very thin layers of material being melted or fused or joined together to create a three-dimensional structure the materials used to create those structures could be very fine powders of very fine metal powders they could be thin strands of polymer the materials used to make parts with 3d printing could also be very fine pop powders of polymer or liquid photoreactive polymers so there are a variety of materials that are used to create structure using 3d printing technology we started to look at what are some of the hazards of 3d printing by focusing first on the emissions from the process and we looked at particulate emissions but also the outgassing or volatile emissions during the use of a 3d printer as well as some of the other issues related to handling of the materials associated with 3d printing and so what we found in our early lab studies was not totally unexpected and that was that there was a large amount of ultrafine particulate being emitted by these printers there was a very complex volatile organic mixture that was emitted by the printers and so we took a look at some of the early toxicology of these of these emissions primarily cellular or cytotoxicology of these emissions what we looked at also was metal powder processes and how one would have to re-evaluate their hazard analysis process based on the very different physical form of the metals that they may have been dealing with in the past are now in a very different type of physical form the very finely divided small particle powders and that represented a whole new class of hazard and a whole new uh and a whole new environment or evaluating hazard potential in the use of this particular additive manufacturing technology so what we've done is we have a growing number of field activities some of you may be aware of some of those field activities but we started adding starting about four years ago new projects in the institute specifically to address additive manufacturing and 3d printing we started with some lab investigations to evaluate and characterize the actual emissions from these printers then we started doing field studies studies on emissions and actual worker exposures starting about to i say in my slide 2016 we probably started this work in late 2014 early 2015 and we began looking at commercial or private sector spaces that were using small and large 3d printers but we've also included recently schools and public spaces that are using these 3d printers and what we did was we took a look at not only the emissions and the emission characteristics but we evaluated either existing or proposed engineering controls and evaluations and we did have one very good success story that i'll get into some detail on where we designed a prototype control that was capable of reducing emissions from one particular type of 3d printer by greater than 98 and i say by greater than 98 because in some cases it was hard to tell if we were actually creating cleaner air in the workspace than what was being used for the for the 3d printer environment but we had a very significant reduction of emissions using this prototype device so this is a little case study on a prevention through design application in a 3d printing environment we had an initial study with a good private sector partner makerbot and they are a manufacturer of small 3d printers i say small everybody is making larger printers these days but makerbot the one particular model that we evaluated based on an invitation from makerbot was a smaller desktop printer that's becoming very popular for many prototyping operations or schools for smaller industries that want to make custom parts out of certain types of plastics and so makerbot volunteered its facilities to the niosh field research team to do some emission studies and we did release our findings along with makerbot so i'm using makerbot's name because we have we have good public rapport with makerpot and they are very excited to partner with niosh on a lot of this work what uh what happened on one of our site visits to the makerbot facility was one of our control technology engineers uh developed a prototype design for a control device that would fit on the particular style of makerbot printer that we were evaluating they actually used a 3d printer to fabricate the control in this case you see a an image of the control that snaps over the printhead on the 3d printer and using some aftermarket parts developed a very effective control device that will resulted in a 98 reduction in the emissions well we have that report in draft and included in that report will be a digital file that gives anybody who'd like to fabricate this control device the design for the control device and a listing of parts that are possible to complete the control device it's a self-contained small hepa filtered vac fan that's connected to the printhead but what happened with that is is that makerbot is considering this as a retrofit kit now i've got the word confidential written in after after this statement i had this slide done earlier this year when makerbot and nash were still discussing how effective this control device might be and if it would be a good thing to offer to customers or customer could go out and fabricate their own both are likely to happen but i've had the word confidential put in after that not so confidential is that makerbot has extended the invitation to niosh and our control technology engineers to work with them on evaluating designs for control in some of their larger printers now those of you especially in academia right now may be interested in similar types of collaborations either with your 3d printer suppliers or doing similar evaluations in your own additive manufacturing or 3d printer labs and nyosh would certainly be interested in collaborating with you and certainly providing guidance on that another advanced manufacturing element is the engineered biology or biology as a manufacturing technology and this is a pretty simple schematic that i've developed on it synthetic biology or the editing of dna material and inserting that into an organism a microorganism to perform a specific function is the foundation of modern biomanufacturing or it's starting with synthetic biology and this leads us to large-scale biological reactions or reactors that make possible either through advanced biotechnology new materials or old materials done in a biological process and what niosh is doing right now is identifying some key partners who we can collaborate with and some of these partners in academia so i think this is another good area for collaboration and partnership is will moving to biology as a manufacturing technology create some unanticipated or unexpected hazards for workers and how would niosh work and how would any occupational safety and health research organization work to identify control or mitigate those potential hazards as this biomanufacturing economy moves forward so going forward our strategy is to develop a strategic plan for advanced manufacturing which we will be putting up on the new advanced manufacturing website on the niosh homepage we want to conduct research that supports responsible development in any of these advanced manufacturing technology areas and we want to continue to develop good public and private partnerships as as we go forward and so that concludes my my run through the advanced manufacturing initiative and i want to give a very high level run through the nanotechnology research effort at niosh the nanotechnology research effort has been a very good and a very productive laboratory and field based research program for niosh we've developed a number of good partnerships and we'd like to continue to develop partnerships in this area it is still for the united states and for the world a high priority area but what is also happening is a very healthy evolution of all of the nano scale science that was has been developed over the last 15 years is now moving rapidly into commercialization and into product applications but what niosh has done most recently is we've developed and updated our strategic plan of research for the nanotechnology research center and this strategic plan which is available on our website and the url is listed here is asking the basic questions that should be asked of where are we where do we want to be and how will we get there and how importantly do we track our progress to do that so we continue to have 10 critical research areas in our nanotechnology effort but many of these areas also now apply to other material science and manufacturing technology areas not just nanotechnology so we are using the nanotechnology effort to expand our effort in other areas and i mentioned that we supported some of the advanced manufacturing technology areas such as 3d printing out of this research effort and so the nanotechnology effort has served as a good starting point and a good launch for many of the research programs inside of niosh and so we continue to ask ourselves whether we are at the very beginning of the evolution of a new material or headed toward its full-scale commercialization is there any hazard have we evaluated exposure and risk and how can that best be managed and that continues to be a cornerstone of our nanotechnology program so 15 years into this have we done anything well we do have a good list of accomplishments and i want to identify these because these continue to be good research areas and good areas for collaboration we've issued recommended exposure limits for three different forms of key nanomaterials we have a variety of guidance documents that are available via the niosh website on nanotechnology a large number of peer-reviewed articles many of those issued with good collaborators in both industry and academia and we've also included our nano we've expanded our nanomaterial research team to include a number of these new advanced manufacturing technologies and we continue to collaborate globally with a variety of these different consensus organizations our overall goal is still promoting and supporting responsible development of this technology of the use of engineered nanomaterials in commerce so we want to develop a good way for occupational safety and health practitioners to understand what kind of potential hazard and risk there may be and we will soon be releasing for review a draft document on a categorical or a banding type approach to understanding engineered nanomaterials and what kind of exposure limits would be most logical for those materials we will continue to support responsive development of this by communicating with the employers and the employees and the workforce on the need to support responsible development and we also want to apply the existing knowledge that we have from nanotechnology over into many of the advanced manufacturing technologies that we see evolving and we continue to be involved with our overall focus is through good worker health and safety we as occupational safety and health practitioners support the development of these new technologies within the strategic plan within the niosh nanotechnology strategic plan we have a number of goals and i'll give you a very high level overview of these goals number one we want to increase our understanding of these new nanomaterials and the health risks related to these new nanomaterials so the nanomaterials that we're evaluating today may not have even existed five years ago but we want to continue to understand what possible health hazards or especially human health hazards might be associated with those materials so a number of the nanomaterials that we are investigating are are listed on my slide here but a new area of research for us is to evaluate the modified nanomaterial from the perspective of safer by design because the material has been modified and the possible toxicology has been reduced i won't say it's been eliminated but it's been reduced and is that a possibility um nano products so we're following nanomaterials down their value chain from their actual manufacturer to the point where they are incorporated into a product such as a polymer or a paint or a surface coating and trying to answer the question does the presence of the nanomaterial in these products when they are disrupted or used or applied or disposed of do they represent any kind of a different hazard for the worker who's involved in their use or in their manipulation or in their formulation so we have a number of those projects that are still ongoing in niosh to follow the nanomaterial down its life cycle or through its value chain and i do have a slide here that shows that we are very busy in the processing and characterize characterizing of aerosols that are generated when some of these nano enabled materials such as composites or plastics or surface coatings are energetically disrupted by sanding or by cutting what's the nature of the aerosol that's generated does this represent a possible hazard and this is a rather aggressive stream of research that niosh is involved in and it's been about five years in the making now that we've evolved this project area within the institute and it's been very productive for us and it's also been an area where we've collaborated with several universities our second goal is to build upon that initial data and provide good guidance and increase our understanding beyond the initial hazard of these engineered nanomaterials this is where we get a lot of information to develop risk assessments and provide good good risk management practices so these documents are current intelligence bulletins for those for some of those key materials and they are also available on the niosh website our third goal is to further inform the workers employers and health professionals about the decision and the decision makers about the hazards and the risk and also understand their practices and so a number of key activities that niosh has been engaged in include the development of these guidance documents providing technical and professional seminars and webinars and developing professional development courses that our scientists deliver on a regular basis on the topic of understanding evaluating and controlling potential hazards from engineered nanomaterials our fourth goal is a very focused effort on epidemiologic studies for nanomaterial workers right now we have a good start on a cohort of carbonaceous nanomaterial workers primarily carbon nanotube workers following their health experience looking at very detailed exposure evaluations and seeing if there's a correlation between exposure and their health outcome that project is now in about its fourth year and will continue on for another couple years and we're hoping that in addition to some of the summaries that have already been published on the carbon nanotube workers epidemiology study we'll be able to expand that into some additional nanomaterials in the future our fifth goal is to assess and promote national and international adherence with risk management guidance we've just started a new effort in that area by launching a national survey of nanomaterial employers to help understand their risk management practices where and how they get their risk management information and whether a lot of the work that we niosh and other health and safety research centers have developed to um to promote the use the use of these risk management practices and and good outcomes in in their workplace so that survey has just launched so what we're doing to get there is we do a lot of intramural research but we we'd also we also collaborate and do some extramural research we have our strategic goals that will be very helpful in looking for ways to collaborate and partner with niosh and we certainly look for ways to provide support for proposals that are coming into niosh i don't want to bother you with burden needed impact you've seen this a lot you hear it a lot but is very important for us as we look at these emerging technologies to keep that out in front of us you know what are the risks how do we do the research methods that allow us to evaluate and assess that risk and what's the likelihood of that reducing of that research reducing the burden so we're very very keen on following our burden need and impact approach to understanding research priorities so the information on the niosh nanotechnology program is available on the niosh topic page we have a collection of good risk management guidance documents on that topic page i have a graphic uh depiction here of of a poster we call it the poster that provides very basic risk management guidance for the introduction of a nanomaterial into a process it's a very straightforward question and answer kind of poster that has worked well for us in the nano materials environment and we're now going to be converting this poster over into a 3d printer or additive manufacturing environment with the same type of logic so we've got a lot of guidance documents that are available it's been a very busy and productive program for us we're looking for areas for collaboration and partnership so if any of you are interested in where and how we might be able to collaborate or where some of the areas of activity are i've mentioned a number of those in the nano and advanced materials areas and synthetic biology so all of these areas i think are are good areas for potential collaboration with niosh going forward so with that i want to thank you i appreciate your patience and having me run through two programs at once here and now i'll turn it over to nicole thank you chuck this is sarah thanks for that great um background on the work that now she's doing and the exciting opportunities for partnership um and as i mentioned we're going to hold questions until the end of both presentations but you can go ahead and enter them in the q a text box and now it's my pleasure to introduce miss nicole new baker from the state university of new york polytechnic institute nicole is going to talk to us about partnerships to advance research and guidance in occupational safety and health and nanotechnology nicole thank you and thank you all for the opportunity to speak with you today suny polytechnic institute has partnered with niosh for the past almost 10 years it's been a very fruitful partnership that has led to many publications conference presentations and very significant information exchange between our two institutions and with the broader scientific and health and safety communities at large so i'm happy to share with you today the history of our partnership to start off i want to tell you a bit about suny poly and why a partnership with niosh was pursued in the first place suny poly is one of 64 state university of new york institutions we have a campus in albany where i am located and a second campus in utica about an hour and a half northwest of albany our albany campus offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in nanoscience nanobioscience and nanoengineering as well as the first of its kind combined md phd in nanomedicine in conjunction with suny downstate medical college in brooklyn we are not a typical university we are very highly integrated with industry we've received billions of dollars in high-tech investments and we've had hundreds of corporate partners since our inception in the early 2000s these corporate partners have predominantly been in the semiconductor or computer chip industry including chip makers like ibm global foundry samsung as well as supporting industries like equipment manufacturers and material apartment partners including tail applied materials airlocked and many others more recently we've expanded into photovoltaics photonics and other areas we have over one and a half million square feet of cutting edge facilities with 300 millimeter wafer clean rooms that look something like this this is where semiconductor r d is done on site we're not a manufacturing scale facility just r d with r d incurring occurring on our campus this provides many opportunities for faculty research staff and students with regard to research collaborations use of processing and metrology tools as well as internship and employment opportunities for our students and perhaps most importantly it means we also have access to workers who may be handling or disposing of engineered nanomaterials there is a polishing process that occurs during semiconductor fabrication that utilizes engineered nanomaterials and a liquid slurry this process is called chemical mechanical planarization or cmp due to the high volume of nanomaterial slurry used and the incomplete toxicology knowledge base the semiconductor industry has identified this polishing process as a critical area for health and safety research this is of particular interest to the brenner research team led by dr sarah brenner a preventive medicine physician our research team is unique among the faculty research groups at suny poly in that instead of doing traditional lab based biology research or engineering of devices our primary research objectives are related to occupational and environmental health and safety i joined the brenner research team in 2012 with a background in public health and toxicology and over the years our team has been comprised of research staff graduate students undergraduate students and interns from suny poly and other institutions team members have had expertise in public health nanoscience physics industrial hygiene environmental health materials science and toxicology our research portfolio focuses on occupational and environmental health and safety for the nanotech workforce with special emphasis on the semiconductor industry and particularly the workers involved with the cmp polishing process we conduct we conduct exposure assessments with workers on site to evaluate potential for nanomaterial emissions and exposures at the same time we also investigate the potential toxicity of the engineered nanomaterials used by the semiconductor industry through animal toxicology studies with collaborators at the university of rochester and stony brook university we've also done quite a bit of research into characterizing nanomaterial waste water from the polishing process that goes through our on-site wastewater treatment facility all this work has led to significant methods development for exposure assessment toxicology and nanoparticle characterization and it all feeds into overarching risk assessment and contributes to workplace recommendations and best practices for this workforce the uniqueness of suny poly being so highly integrated with the semiconductor industry along with the scope and goals of the brenner research team led naturally to a partnership with niosh and our partnership was officially established in 2010 thanks to dr brenner and my co-presenter dr geraci now i'd like to share some highlights of our partnership over the years beginning in with the 2011 niosh field studies team site evaluation the field studies team came to suny poly to conduct a site evaluation which kick-started several years of intensive exposure assessment work by our team i want to mention that this free site evaluation service is not exclusive to our partnership as chuck was sharing in his presentation any company that uses or produces nano materials or advanced materials or uses new manufacturing methods can partner with niosh for a site evaluation the field studies team will come out to your facility to evaluate your work processes identify potential emissions or worker exposures and importantly provide you with guidance on how to effectively control exposures ip is protected throughout the entire process i would encourage anyone who uses nano or advanced materials or new manufacturing processes to get in touch with niosh to discuss the possibility of having the field studies team visit your facility and assess your work tasks and exposure controls the guidance that they provide is invaluable for protecting worker health and safety when the field studies team came to suny poly in 2011 as you can see in the photos here they assessed potential worker exposures to engineered nanomaterials during nanomaterial processing and waste handling tasks related to the cmp polishing process i mentioned a few slides ago this evaluation led to several years of exposure assessment work at suny poly led by the brenner research team we were particularly interested in potential for worker exposure to engineered nanomaterials by inhalation and or through skin contact our own assessments continued over many years to gather more detailed nuanced data and also as chemistry's processes and work protocols changed in 2012 niosh and suny poly co-hosted the prevention through design conference at our albany campus this conference and workshop brought together experts from academia private industry and government to share their perspectives on the safe design of nanomaterials processes and facilities experts at this workshop recommended following a prevention through design approach that anticipates and reduces workplace accidents and exposure our partnership was renewed in 2014 with another mou and that same year began what has been perhaps the most significant sustained outcome of our partnership to date that year i began working for niosh through two interagency personnel assignments the first was a four year assignment which went from 2014 to 2018 and entailed intensive evaluation of enhanced dark field microscopy and hyperspectral imaging as a potential rapid screening tool for the analysis of filter media used to collect nanomaterials from work environments during exposure assessments the current gold standard for this type of analysis is transmission electron microscopy which is very time cost and resource intensive so the goal of this project was to assess whether enhanced dark field microscopy and hyperspectral imaging could act as a rapid screening tool to identify which samples truly need more intensive analysis by electron microscopy a rapid screening tool is critical to expedite analysis and furthermore to expedite any health and safety recommendations that may be warranted i am currently on a second assignment to niosh as of last year my major objectives for this project include publishing data from niosh field studies team site evaluations as well as evaluating the suitability of existing nanospecific models for exposure assessments of the engineered nanomaterials our partnership since 2010 has been very productive we've presented our research at numerous conferences over the years through poster presentations and talks we also have several co-authored publications and several manuscripts in progress i won't go through every paper one by one but i will give give you a quick overview of some of the highlights grouped by category we have six publications about the occupational exposure assessment work done at suny poly one is a co-authored publication detailing the niosh field studies team assessment from 2012 that we chose to publish in order to share those findings with the larger nano health and safety community the other five publications are directly related and detail the exposure assessment work done in the years following the initial field studies team site evaluation we also have several manuscripts that came out of my first assignment we have one co-authored publication that presents a new sample preparation method for enhanced our field and hyperspectral imaging of filter media and we have four manuscripts in preparation that present data from creating and testing protocols with this imaging and analysis screening technique that we hope to have published in the near future these are all niosh suny poly co-authored publications and we already have publications in progress for my current assignment our first co-authored paper is under review we have two more in preparation the paper we have under review summarizes 11 field studies team site evaluations all 11 site evaluations included in this paper were from work sites that either produced engineered nanomaterials by a wet process or used engineered nanomaterials in a wetted suspended or slurry form the data presented in this paper are aggregated and the participating companies are de-identified and are referred to as site a site b etc to maintain confidentiality furthermore all companies included in this paper were contacted before submission for their review and approval so we thank the companies for their participation and we're looking forward to having this published soon so that these important findings can be shared and finally we have two other co-authored publications related to nano-occupational and environmental health and safety the first came out of the 2012 prevention through design conference and the second came out of a panel discussion at the 2017 techconnect conference we've been fortunate to have many opportunities to exchange ideas and research updates in person even though our institute institutions are located in different states aside from the 2012 site evaluation we've hosted dr dracy dr howard laura hodgson my project supervisor adrian eastlake and members of the field studies team on several occasions additionally i was invited to the niosh nanotechnology research center biennial science meeting in morgantown in 2016 where i presented a poster on my hyperspectral imaging work i also had the opportunity to share a research update with this group by webinar in 2017. in 2016 we hosted dr john howard the director of niosh who gave a talk called emerging technology and risk the case of nanomaterials as part of suny poly's colloquium series we also hosted dr gary roth who was a graduate student with the brenner team graduating with his phd in 2015. he has been working as a health scientist for niosh since he graduated which is another very significant outcome of our partnership in 2016 he returned to suny poly to give an alumnus talk relating to our students a first-hand perspective of what of what it is like to work for a federal agency 2016 we hosted dr howard dr geraci and dr roth from niosh as well as colleagues and collaborators from nist west virginia university the science and technology policy institute also known as stippy and the university at albany school of public health for two days of research updates project planning as well as discussions with suny poly faculty and our site environmental health and safety team while we've attended many conferences together over the years the 2017 tech conference was particularly notable at this conference dr geraci dr brenner and dr sally tinkle of stippy chaired a panel discussion regarding occupational and environmental health and safety challenges of advanced manufacturing and the major discussion points and panel recommendations were published uh last year 2018 and i'd encourage you to check this out if you're involved with advanced manufacturing in any capacity most recently i had the opportunity to travel to niosh in cincinnati to see their research facilities and also to discuss research updates and project objectives i was also invited to give a talk about the hyperspectral imaging research i did under my first assignment i was able to um have discussions with microscopists there to discuss data and methods development related to this hyperspectral imaging work so it was a really wonderful opportunity to be able to make the trip out there with occupational and public health at the heart of the missions of both niosh and the brenner research team at suny poly our primary goal of our continuing partnership is to anticipate emerging occupational health and safety challenges and needs to proactively protect workers on the horizon for us includes advanced materials and advanced manufacturing and synthetic biology and all the new challenges that they might bring we're looking forward to continuing our research collaborations well into the future our partnership to date have been invaluable to us and through all these channels i described publications conference attendance and presentations etc i hope it's been invaluable to the broader now and occupational health and safety community as well with that i'd like to wrap up by thanking niosh not only for this long-standing partnership with suny poly but also for funding support through two assignments with special thanks to my co-presenter chuck raci and my project supervisor adrian eastlake as well as the nanotechnology research center including laura hudson eric glassford kevin l dunn kevin h dunn gary roth and alan dozier thanks also to sarah brenner and the brenner research team suny poly and to our collaborators on these projects over the years at the university at albany school of public health and my contact information is listed here and thank you so much for your time nicole thank you very much and thank you for your partnership with niosh these kinds of partnerships are so critical to be able to identify and address emerging issues and roll solutions out into manufacturing and in the workplace beyond as i mentioned we'll take questions now and um we will read the questions that have been written in the q a box if you'd like to add a question please do so by typing it into the q a box which should be visible on your screen and i'll turn it over to pete for moderating the q a thank you both thank you sarah and thank you to the presenters a fabulous job nonetheless what i would like to state now is please start typing in your questions in the q a box and when you type in your questions please make sure that there is no jargon or acronyms so that everyone can best understand the questions and with that note i already have one question that came in and this question is for chuck where can we get a copy of the nano material best management survey questions okay that the answer to that question is a summary of the questionnaire was published in the federal register as a part of our office of management and budget clearance to administer that survey and i don't have the federal register citation at hand right now immediately but we could send that out or make it available it is certainly available on a an internet search but it would be easier for us to send the link to that federal register announcement okay thank you the next question is a question for nicole and chuck will the dark field screening method be developed into a niosh analytic method which would be useful for commercial industrial hygiene laboratories um so this is a great question this has been something that has always been a um a big long-term goal for us for this project at this point right now there's still a lot of methods development work that would need to be done we have so far focused on lab generated positive controls and so there are still a lot of methods development to work out as far as testing the protocols on real world field captured samples from exposure assessments so hopefully that would be a long-term goal if additional funding is secured for further methods development so thank you for that question and and this is chuck i'd like to add to that that niosh and many other laboratories are already using the darkfield hyperspectral microscopy technique for detecting and measuring nanoparticles in biological systems especially cellular systems so our hope was to reapply that technology to air samples for either the detection and measurement or the screening of those samples for further analysis by more sophisticated techniques so we're hopeful that it would be a good screening technique the publications that have come out on that and that nicole and adrian easley continue to produce will be good guidance for laboratories whether those techniques make it into the niosh analytical methods manual or not they would they should be helpful to the laboratory community thank you another question has come in and this one is for chuck also what advice would you give a local public health agent who has received a call from a resident who is concerned about emissions from a local plant that uses nanomaterials well if this is a public health practitioner or official asking the question i guess that there are a variety of ways to respond
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