Environmental Risk Assessment and Management Group (ERAM)

The ERAM group is pioneering methods and applications in environmental risk assessment of advanced materials (including engineered nanomaterials), bio-based materials, plastics and chemicals and is developing approaches to implement the Safe and Sustainable by Design concept, enabling a comprehensive and early view of opportunities and risks of new materials and technologies.

Development and Application of Methods

  • Environmental risk assessment
  • Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD)
  • Experimental work on release of materials
  • Material and Substance Flow Analysis 
  • Risk/benefit assessment
  • Probabilistic Assessment and Meta-Analysis 
  • Guidelines and Tools to support informed decision making
  • Technology Assessment
  • Early-Stage Screening  and prospective LCA 

 

Materials

  • Advanced materials, inlcuding engineered nanomaterials and nanobiomaterials
  • Microplastics and nanoplastics, including tire wear particles
  • Plastics
  • Bio-based materials and polymers
  • Woody biomass
  • Protein-based polymers
  • Side-chain fluorinated polymers, fluoropolymers and perfluoropolyethers
  • Smart materials/products

 

Application fields

  • Textiles
  • Medicine
  • Electronics
  • Consumer products
  • Biosensors
  • Construction
  • Carbon capture and usage

 

Details on current and past projects can be found here.

 

Personal Homepages

Bernd Nowack

Claudia Som

Zhanyun Wang

 

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Group November 2023. Top row from left: Akshat Sudheshwar, Jonathan Blumenthal, Bernd Nowack, Joanke van Dijk, Jacopo Sorani, Yucan Dong, John Hader, Fiorella Pitaro, middle row from left: Yiwen Zhang, Hyunjoo Hong, Claudia Som, Nadia Malinverno, Merve Tunali, Zhanyun Wang, Kealie Vogel, from row from left: Mauricio Ortiz, Jimeng Wu, Danyang Jiang, Anna Shalin, not on photo: Divya Karade, Zelimir Rodic
Contact

Prof. Dr. Bernd Nowack 

Empa
Technology & Society Laboratory
Lerchenfeldstrasse 5
CH-9014 St. Gallen
Tel.: +41 58 765 76 92



 

 

 

 

 

  

 


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