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January 9, 2017

Investigating the impact of natural and human-made nanomaterials on living things


We can't see them, but nanomaterials, both natural and human-made, are literally everywhere, from our personal care products to our building materials--we're even eating and drinking them.

At the NSF-funded Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT), headquartered at Duke University, scientists and engineers are researching how some of these nanoscale materials affect living things. One of CEINT's main goals is to develop tools that can help assess possible risks to human health and the environment. A key aspect of this research happens in mesocosms, which are outdoor experiments that simulate the natural environment -- in this case, wetlands. These simulated wetlands in Duke Forest serve as a testbed for exploring how nanomaterials move through an ecosystem and impact living things.

Credit: National Science Foundation


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