On February 17, 2012, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson will tour the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN) at the University of California, Los Angeles. CEIN has been awarded a $24 million grant from EPA and the National Science Foundation, and is working to train the next generation of nano-scale scientists and engineers. According to EPA, CEIN is one of the nation’s only centers researching predictive toxicology of nanomaterials, and is developing a new approach to identify impacts and environmental hazards of nanomaterials before they become widely used in the environment. CEIN was established in September 2008 with the mission to ensure that nanotechnology is introduced in a responsible and environmentally compatible manner, thereby allowing the U.S. and international communities to leverage the benefits of nanotechnology for global economic and social benefit. CEIN is accomplishing this mission by developing a broad-based series of decision tools based on models of predictive toxicology and risk ranking premised on selected nanomaterial property-activity relationships that determine fate, transport, exposure, and biological injury mechanisms at cellular, tissue, organism, and population levels.
