The research activities of the EHS platform are in the field of nanotoxicology and intensively focus on understanding the interaction between nanomaterials and living systems.

Currently, over a few thousand of nano-based products and applications have been identified in the market worldwide. A good percentage of such nanoproducts will be directly or indirectly interacting with biological systems since they are frequently used in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, implants, food, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, but also in packaging, emissions, textiles and electronic materials. In this scenario, it is necessary to have a reasonably good understanding of the impact of nanotechnology on human health and environment to cope up with the fast rate of advances in the generation of new nano-based products. The lack of general agreement in defining nanomaterials standards and terminology is indeed contributing to increase a broad uncertainty towards their use. Hence, commercialization of products derived from nanoparticles  may be very complicated, owing to the potential difficulties in gaining regulatory approval.

The primary aim of the EHS platform is to identify the responses of biological systems upon interaction with nanoscale materials (i.e., nanoparticles, nanostructured substrates, etc.). Identifying and categorizing the responses based on the size, shape, composition and structure of the nanomaterial is highly emphasized. An in-depth investigation of the interaction mechanisms is performed by applying a massive multidisciplinary approaches which foresee the combined use of several analytical techniques, nanotoxicogenomics, nanoproteomics and advanced imaging tools. Both cell lines and simple animal models are explored in this respect, in order to develop appropriate metrological tools that can provide a general assessment of potential toxicity of nanoparticles. Eventually, procedures and protocols developed for metrological assessment will be compared to the international regulatory rules.