(NHI Nanoblog) Joining a chorus of concern about the long-term implications of products that include super-small particles, an all-star National Academy of Sciences panel is pushing for prioritizing research on the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials.
The report, released Wednesday, echoes much of the anxiety that’s coursing through the community of academics, manufacturers and regulators about these materials.
By leveraging the often-amazing properties of ultra-tiny materials, nanotechnology can make airplane wings stronger and help cancer treatments ruthlessly target the bad cells. But as nano-enabled products proliferate — in everything from sunscreen to humidifiers—there’s a big gap between what’s possible and what’s been tested for safety. The smaller size of these materials can sometimes change the way they interact with the world around them, raising serious questions about their impact on health and the environment.
That’s what the panel focused on. Its recommendations include many that other committees and groups have suggested: conducting “life-cycle” assessments that track what happens from manufacturing to disposal of a product; the need for new tools to measure toxicity and behavior of these particles; and seeking ways to consider risk that might be different from existing mechanisms. The report also recommends spending more money on risk-related research.
Andrew Maynard, director of the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center and a member of the committee, published a brief take on the report’s highlights here.
The report breaks some new ground toward the end as it discusses the federal government’s oversight role. The committee has some kind words for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which oversees nano-related policy. The NNI released its own health and safety strategy last fall, which covered much of the same ground as the committee’s report (read about that here).
Because of timing, however, the NNI blueprint wasn’t evaluated by the committee; the NNI has released a comparison of the two documents to highlight the common ground between them (click here to read it).
But the report takes aim at the idea that the same people who are supposed to be promoting innovation in nanotechnology are also charged with overseeing the environmental health and safety, or EHS, angles.
That should change, and soon, the report says.
“The committee concludes that a clear separation in management and budgetary authority and accountability is needed between the functions of developing and promoting applications of nanotechnology and of understanding and assessing its potential health and environmental implications,” the report says. “Such a separation is needed to ensure that progress in implementing an effective EHS-research strategy is not hampered.”
This is interesting, because it gets at a tension that has seemed to stymie efforts to move ahead with rules and regulations on nano-enabled products. How do you protect the public without scaring them, or stifling innovation, particularly in the current environment of economic urgency?
The answer has implications for a host of efforts now under way at federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration — and for the public.
