Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
Or at least the small screen. Coming to your local PBS station this month is a three-part series on nanotechnology called The Power of Small. The segments cover three facets of the much-needed social debate about nanotechnology: privacy issues (e.g., nano-enabled tracking devices), ethical issues (focusing on the potential to greatly extend human life expectancy), and, of course, the environmental risks and applications. Read More
Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.
With conventional chemicals, experience has allowed us to articulate general criteria based on chemical properties that identify chemicals of greatest concern. For example, persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals are assigned a high priority, whereas chemicals that quickly degrade and don’t build up in blood or tissue are, as a rule, likely to be of lower priority.
Concerns about nanomaterials arise from observations that properties that emerge or are greatly enhanced at the nanoscale can alter behavior, including biological activity. These properties make such materials different from conventional forms of the same chemicals. But can a general principle that nanomaterials pose a greater concern than their conventional counterparts be supported? Read More
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
As I noted in an earlier post, the federal government staunchly maintains that regulatory agencies’ current authorities and regulatory structures are adequate. Yet I sense quite a bit of angst — even panic — in the agencies over how they will actually address the complexities of nanotechnology under those existing authorities and regulatory structures.
The claim that laws developed long before nanotechnology came along can nevertheless manage it flawlessly smacks of a double standard: If there’s nothing novel here, why is the federal government investing $1.5 billion annually to develop nanotechnology? Read More
Scott Walsh, MBA, is a Project Manager.
As we’ve noted in this blog and elsewhere, there’s a ton of uncertainty out there about what potential risks may arise from the production, use and disposal of engineered nanomaterials. And unfortunately for companies trying to work with such materials (and the rest of us who may be exposed to them), there’s still not much guidance on how to identify, manage and mitigate potential risks.
On April 2nd and April 8th, Terry Medley and Keith Swain from DuPont and I will be leading two interactive workshops on nano risk management. Read More
John Balbus, M.D., M.P.H., is Chief Health Scientist.
EPA’s recently released draft Nanotechnology Research Strategy (NRS) proposes a tiered testing system to evaluate human toxicity of nanomaterials. It puts in vitro tests, or those done in test tubes and petri dishes as opposed to living animals, front and center. EPA says the results of the first, in vitro tier will be used for guidance on “what health endpoints to monitor” and the second, in vivo tier will then help “identify those in vitro assays that correlate with in vivo nanomaterial toxicity or health effects.”
Wait a second. If the in vivo testing is necessary in order to figure out what the in vitro testing results really mean, how can the agency use the in vitro testing results to figure out what health endpoints to monitor? This cart and horse confusion is a serious matter. Read More
Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.
Each year, the journal Environmental Science & Technology selects a list of Top Papers it has published that are “expected to have a significant and long-lasting impact on the field.” For 2007, its choice for the top environmental science paper addresses a curious facet of the behavior of certain metal oxide nanoparticles: They can behave as “Trojan horses,” getting inside cultured lung cells and causing significant damage. Read More
