Nature Nanotechnology just published (advance online edition) a commentary titled Nanotechnology: Learning from past mistakes. It’s the first time I’ve seen an article which advises humility as an important factor when developing new sciences and technologies.  The authors Stefan Foss Hansen and Anders Baun of the Technical University in Denmark, Andrew Maynard of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, and Joel Tickner at the University of Massachusetts are drawing on an earlier report by the European Environment Agency which examined 14 case studies where early warnings about a new technology were ignored and resulted in some serious health issues.  Foss, et al are comparing nanotechnology’s emergence to these earlier cases and the outcome is mixed ie, there’s some good and there’s some bad. Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall. There’s a bit more info. here at Science Daily or here at Phys.org.

Still on the safety train, there’s a study of Swiss consumers which suggests that they accept the idea of nanotechnology applications being used in food packaging. This seems unusual and I haven’t had time to track down the study but there’s a bit more about it here.