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), CO2- and 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

 

20250826-Z8D_2311+%281%29.jpg
Group August 2025. Bottom row from left:  Akshat Sudheshwar, Nadia Malinverno, Merve Tunali, Bernd Nowack, Claudia Som, Stephanie Eitner, Fiorella Pitaro, Kealie Vogel; Top row: Yumeng Chen, Mauricio Ortiz Galvez, Jacopo Sorani, Nurshen Mutlu, Vicenc Pomar Portillo, Tim Börner, John Hader, Jimeng Wu, Huadong Xing, Yiwen Zhang, Danyang Jiang, Jaleesia Amos, Elias Zimmermann; not on photo: Emilee Severe, Hyunjoo Hong, Zhanyun Wang
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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