UK Royal Commission concludes that nano should be regulated and synthetic bio event reminder

According to the online BBC News, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has suggested that reporting the use of nanomaterials in industrial applications become mandatory and that establishing tests for danger and regulatory insight be undertaken cooperatively and internationally. The Commission advised against a blanket moratorium or ban on the development of nanomaterials because there are so many potential benefits. The members of the commission focused their efforts on how nanomaterials function rather than their size or dimension. There’s more from the article here.

On a personal basis, this is rather timely as I’m trying to write up a PhD research proposal and I’ve remarked on this obsession with ‘nano numbers’ as it were. There’s a group of people at Cornell University who are trying to find ways to convey size as a means of educating the public about nanotechnology. I don’t think that’s a good idea after having tried that strategy a few times in conference presentations and watching my audiences’ eyes glaze over. Most of us don’t have any sense of how big a germ is but we can imagine it and I think that’s what will happen with nanomaterials — we will be able to imagine them. Or for another example, what about electricity? We don’t see it but we take it for granted and we have a pretty good sense that certain activities could kill or severely harm us, i. e. “Don’t touch a live wire” or “Don’t stick a knife into your toaster when it’s plugged in and switched on.”

The Synthetic Bio: Coming Up Fast! event organized by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnolgies is taking place on Nov. 14, 2008. (The first notice for this event was in my Oct. 28, 2008 posting.) The webcast has been delayed to 1:45 pm ET or, as I think of it, 10:45 am PT.  If you’re planning to attend the live event, check out the details here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *