Nasar: a project on nanosafety research by radiochemical and nuclear techniques

Although the production and applications of engineered nanoparticles (NPs) are in a remarkable increase, many are the unresolved questions about their potential adverse health and environmental impacts arising from exposure to these innovative materials. Nanosafety is today recognized as a central scientific reference point for risk prevention and responsible nanotechnology development due to industrial and socio-economic expectations. This discipline, having to deal with very complex problems, such as the understanding of the toxicity mechanisms that underpin some peculiar NPP-induced toxic responses, is characterized by a multidisciplinary character, requiring an integrated use of different analytical techniques of a more traditional type (spectroscopic, bioanalytic, molecular biology) that is more sophisticated like highly specialized microscopy, nuclear and radiochemical techniques, that play a fundamental and crucial role in understanding the effects induced by exposure to NPs. In particular, in order to illustrate the types of information that can be obtained with the use of such techniques some examples of applications related to studies with metallic NPs and based on the use of the nuclear reactor Triga Mark II of the University of Pavia will be presented. It will be clear from the presentation how nanotoxicology/nanosafety requires new specialists in the context of analytical chemistry, such as nuclear and radioanalytic techniques of radionochemistry. The real crucial point is the cultural and operative preparation of new operators in these fields that implies the necessity that courses like health physics, nuclear chemistry, radiochemistry and related subjects must be more present in the university curricula. It is important to take in mind that the subjects related to these fields require a constructive collaboration between Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine that are only different chapters of the only one great book of the life science.