Achievement

IGERT student Amy Dale has developed a mass balance based model for the fate of silver nanoparticles in the environment. She combined information from the literature with expertise of the other IGERT students and faculty, and other members with the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology to develop a model that included relevant transformations of Ag NPs in the environment. These transformations significantly impact the potential for these materials to impact the ecosystem, and building accurate risk assessment models needs to include these transformations. This exercise helped to focus Amy’s efforts on sediment models since most released Ag NPs will reside in this compartment and will lead to a publication of the first risk assessment model for Ag NPs that incudes the relevant physicochemical behaviors affecting fate and toxicity.