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Professor co-authors chapter in new book

A professor in the college’s Department of Physiological Sciences has co-authored a chapter in a new book due out in May from Wiley Publishers.

Dr. Steve Roberts, who directs UF’s Center for Environmental and Human Toxicology, has a chapter titled, “Factors Affecting the Oral Bioavailability of Nanomaterials” in the Handbook of Nanotoxicology, Nanomedicine and Stem Cell Use in Toxicology, edited by Saura C. Sahu and Daniel A. Casciano.

Roberts’ chapter deals with assessing the safety of nanomaterials in food, he said. The chapter’s co-author, Georgia Hinkley, is Roberts’ senior graduate student.

A nanomaterial is generally considered to be anything that is 1 – 100 nm in size, which is 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Nanomaterials can occur naturally, but also represent a new class of engineered materials used for a variety of purposes.

“Engineered nanomaterials are being added to a variety of food products and find their way into food from packaging materials,” Roberts said. “New methods are needed to be able to detect nanomaterials in food and to assess their safety.”

Roberts and Dr. Annette McCarthy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently co-chaired the steering committee for the NanoRelease Food Additive Project, an international effort to identify and develop methods to characterize and evaluate nanomaterials in food.