Nanocomposites risks associated with

Fig. 26 Graphical assessment of fire risk associated with PE/LDH nanocomposites, plotting THR against PHRR/fig for different LDH concentration. The LDH concentration increases from right to left (Reprinted from [135], with permission from Elsevier)...

A problem with life cyde assessment of nanocomposites is that so far no generally agreed upon way has been found to deal with the health hazard and risk associated with nanoparticles [34]. An important reason for this is that human toxicity and ecotoxicity are normally linked to the emitted mass of substances, whereas the determinants of nanoparticle hazards are, as pointed out in the previous section, factors such as number of particles and surface characteristics. An additional problem is that there may be size-dependent nonlinearities in the relation between surface and hazard to human health [26]. The same may hold for ecotoxicity [26]. However, the other aspects indicated in Box 12.1 pose no insurmountable problem to nanocomposite life cycle assessment. 

Reducing Nanoparticle-Based Health Hazards and Risks Associated with Nanocomposite Life Cycles... 

Some applications are at a fundamental research stage with associated higher risk, i.e. electroless coating, semiconductors, anodising, nanocomposite coatings. 

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