Compendium of Safety Regulatory for Safe Applications of Aerogels

Abstract

An increasing number of aerogels as nanostructured highly porous materials are entering the market in every day products, with an attractive portfolio of properties for emerging applications ranging from health care and leisure to electronics, cosmetics, energy, agriculture, food and environmental. However, the novelty in properties and forms of aerogels makes the development of a legislative framework particularly challenging for ensuring the safe development and use of nano-enabled products. The presented safety regulatory Compendium intends to share knowledge with the international aerogels community, as well as end-users and stakeholders, on the regulatory and safe handling procedures, as best safety practices, to be followed during the production process, handling, transport and end-use of aerogel-based formulations to mitigate human and environmental risks considering lack of data availability for this purpose in general.

Bio-Based Aerogels for the Removal of Heavy Metal Ions and Oils from Water: Novel Solutions for Environmental Remediation

“…Aerogel is a general term referring to novel nanostructured materials characterized by very high porosity and tunable physicochemical properties that are obtained following a sol-gel process and an appropriate drying method [17,19]. Such novel materials are entering the market in everyday products and a wide portfolio of properties usable for applications in health care, foods, agriculture, energy, and environmental remediation [16].…”

“…Emerging adsorbent materials that have gained extensive attention for environmental remediation are aerogel-based materials [14][15][16]. Aerogels are a special class of nanostructured materials showing ultra-light weight, high porosity, and tunable physicochemical properties [16,17]. Aerogels can be subdivided into three categories: inorganic, organic, and hybrid.…”

Updated Aspects of Safety Regulations for Biomedical Applications of Aerogel Compounds—Compendia-Like Evaluation

“…Within the production and manipulation activities of the aerogels' global regulation, it is highly necessary to prevent any risks to human health. In a recently published paper on the safety regulations for the manipulation of silica-based aerogels, the risks imposed to human health were highlighted [107].…”