HSE Summary

Health Safety and Environmental Resources (HSE)

Cellulose nanomaterials (CN) represent a diverse class of materials with many exceptional properties. These properties are being applied in diverse industrial and commercial uses including adhesives, cements, composites, paper products, electronics, textiles, cosmetics, medical devices and food additives, among others. Key to successful commercial scale advancement of these materials is identifying and addressing any health safety and environmental (HSE) issues from a regulatory and market perspective. Safety is best examined across the product life-cycle from the production of cellulose nanomaterials, to their incorporation into products (i.e., worker safety), their use by consumers (i.e., consumer safety) and their eventual end-of-life fate (i.e., environmental safety). Here we provide some of the latest HSE resources (i) for CN specifically and (ii) for nanomaterials more generally. Select guidance and recent publications are listed for various aspects of CN HSE, including life-cycle risk assessments, physical-chemical characterization and occupational exposure assessments. An interactive ‘Global Safety Map’ and list of organizations currently working on the HSE of nanomaterials are also included. Visit again, as we plan to grow this ever-changing resource list. For up-to-date reports, visit and subscribe to BioNano Safety News!