My Final Few Words...

Finally, our SGT project work has come to an end. But, it would definitely rise a different perspection to think of our beloving environment and health. Usage of Nanomaterials in the consumer products are still new and most of their characteristics are still unknown. Again, most of the general people are not aware of these nanomaterials related facts and I believe that our work would never be done until we convey our gathered information to them. This is why we have chosen Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest daily newspaper in Finland as our reporting medium to make people atleast to think about the nanomaterials surrounding them. A full page article would be published regarding these nanomaterials related facts quite soon.

This project work has given me a lot. It has given me an idea how big project works are performed, how Finnish corporate world works and most importantly, I have made some amazing friends like Mirja, our group mentor, Saara, Esen, Basanta and Martin. Thank you guys for this wonderful, energetic and work worthy Spring'11 semester. I believe, our friendship will not end with the end of this project work and please keep connected with me via gmail, facebook or some other social networking site.

I am also very grateful to the SGT course coordinators for giving me the opportunity to work in this superb project. Please, keep arranging these types of projects in every year and make sure that the works and ideas are implemented practically to fulfill the greater needs.

MY Camp in June

A Millenium Youth (MY) camp is organized that would take place from June 11, 2011 to June 17, 2011 in Helsinki. In this camp, some skillful and nice young people from different countries would be working in different groups on different topics. The participants were divided into 5 project groups and each group consists of 6 members.

I have been chosen to tutor the Water group of this MY camp event on behalf of my SGT Nano project group. The topic of this Water group is not finalized yet but some proposals have already been made. The topic would be selected according to the individual assignments done be each group members.

This one week event includes lectures, workshops, meetings with top Finnish scientists, team work, visits to the cooperating organisations and some leisure as well.

This kind of event is quite new to me and I am feeling so excited like all the participants of this camp. It would surely be one of the best memorable events in my life.

VTT Meeting

On April 5, 2011, a meeting was held with Ulrika Backman of VTT in their Otaniemi office. Though there were lots of restrictions to provide informations regarding VTT's ongoing researches on nanomaterials, Ulrika gave us a general idea on their activities towards nanomaterial safety issues on human health.

According to the meeting discussion, VTT is currently working on air borne nanomaterials and how much they effect on human health. In VTT laboratories, the researchers are working on the exposure level of air borne nanoparticles and based on the measurement data they are examining the toxicity level of human cells.

The researchers are also evaluating the environmental safety of nanomaterials based on five different methods.

Moreover, VTT is working on the life cycles of 4 different nanoparticles- nanocellulose, coated glass substrates, carbon nanotube composites and titanium dioxide in paint which are the mostly used nanomaterials in different consumer and industrial products.

As Ulrika said, there is nothing to get anxious regarding nanomaterials related hazards since no reported public health impacts is found yet caused by these materials. Again, in Finland, the number of air borne nanoparticles produced in the worst case scenario is very low (3000-5000 particles per cubic centimeters) compared to the other countries, e.g. Germany (20000-30000 particles per cubic centimeters).

Kemira Meeting

On March 29, 2011, we all went to the R&D centre of Kemira which is located in Espoo for our third group meeting with a company. The meeting was started with a presentation demonstrating company's brief description, their ongoing activies and future goals. Afterward, a lab tour was held to introduce us to some of their ongoing research works. In their pulp processing lab, they showed us that they had been trying to utilize micro and nano cellulose to intoduce an improved pulp and paper making process for quite some times. After the lab tour, an interview session was arranged where we talked to some of the experts and researchers working at that R&D centre. We asked them about several aspects regarding nanomaterials, their products those use nanomaterials, possible hazards to health and environment, existing legislations to control the exercise of nanomaterials in various products.

According to the meeting discussion, in present there is no standard test method which can define nanomaterials appropriately. Because, nanomaterial length ranges 1-100 nm at one or two dimensions and methods differ due to this diffrent size range. Nanomaterials of same kind of different sizes effect differently, so it is very difficult to put any particular legislation what would say which nanoscale size should be used to manufacture the products that satisfies safety issues. In this case, industries who use nanomaterials always need to pay focus on their products and since the safety of consumers is their primary responsibility, they must run researches on their products at continuous basis to find out whether they are at good or bad phases. They are bound do that for their own survival in this competitive market.

Again, several surveys conclude that, most of the hazards what might caused by the nanomaterials can occur in the manufacturing level rather in the final products. So, worker safety needs to be taken as a big concern.

The Kemira researchers urge that, there should be a certified or government authorized nanomaterial research centre where all the companies would send the research results of their manufactured products. That certified centre would evaluate those research results and based on that evaluation the companies would be able to commercialize their products.

The meeting came to an end after a lunch session in the company's cafeteria.

Meeting with Finnish Institute of Occupational Health

On last Friday, 15^th of April, we went to visit Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (Työterveyslaitos, TTL), which was the final meeting out of the total of six meetings. Altogether six researcher and experts were there to be interviewed. This spring 2011 European Commission has announced the NanoSafety Research Centre of TTL to lead the NanoSafety Cluster in Europe during two years. At the moment they have 7 big EU-projects going on related to nanomaterials. TTL’s research is mainly concentrating to health and environmental aspects of nanomaterials in workplaces where nanomaterials are produced. The research is three dimensional including risk estimation, defining the real exposure in workplaces and risk assessment work. This data will be valuable for the legislators. 

Like in previous meetings the message was clear that the health and safety research of nanomaterials is lacking behind of the nanotechnology development. They also mentioned that maybe big international companies like BASF and Bayer are already ahead in the research compared the public research because the safety of their products it’s a crucial thing for them. Some countries in Europe like Great Britain, France, German and Sweden have already their own nanostrategy. In Finland this kind of strategy will be structured in coming years.

Important thing is not just research but also understand what the results mean. For example TiO₂ was discovered to be toxic when tested with rats by using very high doses. But this is same thing with every other particle when they are small enough, because inhalation is the most common exposure route. Also other publications have reported similar effects but these kinds of publications have to be discounted and examined carefully before any conclusions.   

TTL’s key message was that open communication is needed to avoid prejudices. Nanomaterials are important thing for many industries because of their good properties. Nanotechnology will create new jobs and help the success of the European industry. TTL’s job is to make sure these materials are safe to use, so no harmful releases to the environment will happen. The data their produce will also help to regulate nanomaterials.     

Getting it together

We have now one more visit left and we have started to write a summary of our work. We have divided it to a smaller parts and each of us will write one part of it. Then we will put it together and translate it to finnish. After the translation we will send it to Helsingin sanomat editor. He will then read it and decide whether he will make an article about it. If it gets through then it will be published in Helsingin Sanomat science pages. I hope that they are interested and will write a story. This has been a very inspiring project and Im glad that I have been a part of it.

Guru meetings

We have had now three meetings in different organisations who are dealing with nanomaterials. We have visited Syke, Tukes and Kemira. We will meet specialists in Tikkurila this Friday and on forthcoming weeks we will meet specialists working in VTT and Työterveyslaitos.

Today we had meeting with Kemira. We heard basic facts about Kemira and then we got introduced with Kemira´s  laboratories. After laboratory visit we discussed about the topic with these specialists. it was very interesting to hear specialists who are working with nanomaterials. Im looking forward to next meetings and then we will have quite wide perspective about nanomaterials.

On Monday we will meet at Ulla´s Clinic and discuss about our final presentation. We also have to do a  summary by the end of this month  for Helsingin Sanomat in order to get our results published and give information to consumers about the topic.

Guru meetings

Many things have happened since the last blog writing. Our group has concentrated now to arrange guru meetings. We have already met experts from Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (TUKES) and Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE). Also a meeting with Finnish Institute of Occupational Health has been settled and meetings with VTT (Technical Research Centre) and Tikkurila are still open. It is surprisingly time consuming to arrange these meetings if you don’t have a direct contact person. After many emails and calls you still might haven’t succeed at all which is frustrating. However it is nice that these organizations, institutes and companies have been interested on our projects and a part of these meetings have come true.

In TUKES a presentation about the regulatory practice of nanomaterials was given to us. Our knowledge of the work concentrating to regulating of nanomaterials in EU and in global level increased too. I think it was a really useful meeting and it somehow increased also my motivation. In SYKE they are searching impacts of nanomaterials on an aquatic environment and we discussed more technical things. We had prepared a list of questions but unfortunately they couldn’t answer all of them, because some results were unpublished and still under investigation. It is clear that experts are careful what should be said and what should not be said. There are many uncertainties related to this topic so any side for or against cannot be taken.

The final work has also got its frames. We are now planning to make an article for Helsingin Sanomat but if it doesn’t work other newspapers/magazines can be considered. This article has to be in Finnish so we need to think how the writing work can be divided. A poster is also possible and it could be a good material for the final presentation. The material collected from guru meetings are used to gather up the article and the poster. The next thing is to settle the rest of the meetings and begin the planning of the article.


-Saara 

Participatory workshop

Today we had participatory workshop day. First in action was group 4, Taipei River urbanism. When we got in to the class, they gave us a piece of paper which contained our group number and our role in this groupwork. My role was a local fisherman and in first assigment I had to think where he would like to live in Taipei if he can choose. In second assigment we were given a number of chips, which we had to put on some important sectors to represent what would be important for each person that we represented. Different roles that we represented had different amount of chips like in real life some have less some have more. In third assigment we had the opportunity to rethink Taipei city.The task was to rebuild Taipei the way we wanted.
I think  this group gave us clear view that there are many different stakeholders in urban areas and they all  have different views. Groupworks were very good organized and a fun way to learn.

Group 1  - sustainable campus -waste management was next to represent their work. First they gave us a lot of information on their subject. First assigment was a quiz about waste management. Their second assigment for us was a group work where we had to think about waste management. We had in our tables different kind of waste and we had to put them in right places in waste management like biomass, hazardous waste, mixed waste and energy waste. This work gave me a lot of information about waste management and it insipired people in the groupwork to discuss. Group gave us info sheet about waste management which I found useful.

Then it was time for our workshop. First we put people to think about their knowlegde about nanomaterials. In  second task we show people different kind of materials and asked them if they think these would include nanomaterials or can be produced to nanomaterial. Third part in our workshop was a video about nanomaterials and power point slides on subject. In our last groupwork we got people to think about what would be the best way to get information about our subject. By this way we gathered information on methods that we can use to reach peoples thoughts. Each member in our group had done their part of the work very well and I think we did great work :) I think we also got good feedback and everyone had fun.
Tomorrow we will meet again with our group members and discuss about outcome of our workshop.

Changing the focus

The latest group meeting was quite effective. Ulla’s clinic will be on next week and we need to prepare the project proposal and to make plans for the workshop. The last class discussion with our course mates made it clear that people are more concerned about how nanomaterials are affecting them. So we decided to change our focus from nanomaterials in aquatic systems to the effects of nanomaterials on living environment and the possible health impacts. In this way we have a better opportunity to reach our target group, consumers, who are more interested in things that maybe cause some health effects. Decision makers and the industry using nanomaterials are still in our target in a way. If we can increase the knowledge of consumers of nanomaterials, we can indirectly achieve changes in opinions and actions in these two groups too, industry and legislators. Now it seems that development of the nanomaterials are going faster that studies related to environment and health.

How to bring this information to consumers? We made a list of communication tools, where different medias where strongly present. It was fun to play with ideas making a video clip for a TV or a newspaper article for the biggest newspaper in Finland. We also recognised that our technical skills are not very broad and we might need some help from outside. However what the end of this project is going to be it’s still a big learning process for all of us like one member of our group reminded.

The frames of our workshop are also ready but we still need to discuss about the details. Personally I felt quite hard to combine our lecture subject “participatory methods” and our project subject. How we can take advantage of the workshop and make good use of the results we get? But it’s the best part of the team working, when your own mind is empty there is always someone who supports you and gives some great ideas you can start to develop further.   

our first meeting with the group

In  the last mondays lecture we got to know each other. We also got familiar with our topic which is  nanomaterial and plastic debris in aquatic systems. Our object is to identify the problems and find the ways to raise awareness in our target groups.

Last week one day after the lecture we meet with my group for the first time. Our group decided to focus on nanomaterial debris in aquatic systems.We tried to find target group for our work but we did not yet decide it.Our options are consumers, industry, decision makers and media. For the next meeting we all have different tasks to complete before the next meeting. We all focus on one subject; sources, environmental problems, health threats and process. Trough this we try to identify the problems.

Our group will meet tomorrow and we will discuss about the content of the project proposal and the concept note for the participatory workshop.