Why assess nano risks?

It seems like there’s a pretty obvious answer…because it could be dangerous…but risk is usually discussed along with regulatory oversight and policy which has implications for research funding, consumer acceptance, and more. So back the article on risk management where they cite three traditional risk management principles

(a) acceptable risk (b) cost-benefit analysis, and (c) feasbility (or best avaialble technology).

In acceptable risk, you figure what the risks are and then work to minimize them until you have a technology with an acceptable level of risk. In a cost-benefit analysis, you determine if the benefits and the costs are equal, there are more benefits than costs, or there are more costs than benefits. This is generally speaking, bottom-line driven. In the third principle, feasibility (or best available technology), skips over any analysis of risk (unlike the other two principles), according the article,

This approach, which requres reduction of risks to the lowerst level technoligcally or ecooomically feasible, has the advantage of not requiring information about risks or benefits.

This one has me a little confused as it suggests that the risk has already been assessed somehow but this is no longer brought into the final equation. In other words, if we decide that steam is superior to electricity as an agent for power, we haven’t discussed the risks per se but this is implied when determining the most feasible technology for the job.

There are more principles to come tomorrow including the precautionary principle.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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