On a practical level, it’s becoming clear that we need to become more thoughtful about our use of water. We here in Canada tend to take our water for granted, as if we have an inexhaustible supply. According to this August 21, 2008 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) online news item, that’s not the case,
Canada’s stores of fresh water are not as plentiful as once thought, and threaten to pinch the economy and pit provinces against each other, a federal document says.
An internal report drafted last December [2007] by Environment Canada warns that climate change and a growing population will further drain resources.
“We can no longer take our extensive water supplies for granted,” says the report, titled A Federal Perspective on Water Quantity Issues.
The Canadian Press obtained the 21-page draft report under the Access to Information Act.
It suggests the federal government take a more hands-on role in managing the country’s water, which is now largely done by the provinces. Ottawa still manages most of the fresh water in the North through water boards.
The Conservatives promised a national water strategy in last fall’s throne speech but have been criticized since for announcing only piecemeal projects.
The Tories, like the previous Liberal government, are also behind in publishing annual reports required by law that show how water supplies are used and maintained.
The last assessment posted on Environment Canada’s website is from 2005-06.
The internal draft report says the government currently does not know enough about the country’s water to properly manage it.
‘This is not a crisis yet. Why would we expect any government, regardless of political leaning or level, to do anything about it?’
“Canada lacks sound information at a national scale on the major uses and user[s] of water,” it says.
“National forecasting of water availability has never been done because traditionally our use of the resource was thought to be unlimited.”
Canada has a fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water, but only seven per cent of it is renewable. The rest comes from ice-age glaciers and underground aquifers.
One per cent of Canada’s total water supply is renewed each year by precipitation, the report says.
Moreover, government data on the country’s groundwater reserves is deemed “sparse and often inadequate.”
That’s in contrast to the United States, which has spent more than a decade mapping its underground water reserves. Canada shares aquifers with the U.S., and the report says: “Our lack of data places Canada at strategic disadvantage for bilateral negotiations with the U.S.”
A comprehensive review [World Wildlife Federation: a national assessment of of Canada’s freshwater Watershed Reports; 2017] freshwater ecosystems reveals rising threats from pollution, overuse, invasive species and climate change among other problems. Yet, the biggest threat of all may be a lack of information that hinders effective regulation, Ivan Semeniuk reports. …
Some of that information may be out of date.
Getting back on topic, here’s one possible solution to better managing our use of water.
Every day, more than 141 billion liters of water are used solely to flush toilets. With millions of global citizens experiencing water scarcity, what if that amount could be reduced by 50%?
The possibility may exist through research conducted at Penn State, released today (Nov. 18) in Nature Sustainability.
“Our team has developed a robust bio-inspired, liquid, sludge- and bacteria-repellent coating that can essentially make a toilet self-cleaning,” said Tak-Sing Wong, Wormley Early Career Professor of Engineering and associate professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering.
…
Penn State researchers have developed a method that dramatically reduces the amount of water needed to flush a conventional toilet, which usually requires 6 liters. Image: Wong Laboratory for Nature Inspired Engineering
In the Wong Laboratory for Nature Inspired Engineering, housed within the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Research Institute, researchers have developed a method that dramatically reduces the amount of water needed to flush a conventional toilet, which usually requires 6 liters.
Co-developed by Jing Wang, a doctoral graduate from Wong’s lab, the liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS) coating is a two-step spray that, among other applications, can be applied to a ceramic toilet bowl. The first spray, created from molecularly grafted polymers, is the initial step in building an extremely smooth and liquid-repellent foundation.
“When it dries, the first spray grows molecules that look like little hairs, with a diameter of about 1,000,000 times thinner than a human’s,” Wang said.
While this first application creates an extremely smooth surface as is, the second spray infuses a thin layer of lubricant around those nanoscopic “hairs” to create a super-slippery surface.
“When we put that coating on a toilet in the lab and dump synthetic fecal matter on it, it (the synthetic fecal matter) just completely slides down and nothing sticks to it (the toilet),” Wang said.
With this novel slippery surface, the toilets can effectively clean residue from inside the bowl and dispose of the waste with only a fraction of the water previously needed. The researchers also predict the coating could last for about 500 flushes in a conventional toilet before a reapplication of the lubricant layer is needed.
While other liquid-infused slippery surfaces can take hours to cure, the LESS two-step coating takes less than five minutes. The researcher’s experiments also found the surface effectively repelled bacteria, particularly ones that spread infectious diseases and unpleasant odors.
If it were widely adopted in the United States, it could direct critical resources toward other important activities, to drought-stricken areas or to regions experiencing chronic water scarcity, said the researchers.
Driven by these humanitarian solutions, the researchers also hope their work can make an impact in the developing world. The technology could be used within waterless toilets, which are used extensively around the world.
“Poop sticking to the toilet is not only unpleasant to users, but it also presents serious health concerns,” Wong said.
However, if a waterless toilet or urinal used the LESS coating, the team predicts these types of fixtures would be more appealing and safer for widespread use.
To address these issues in both the United States and around the world, Wong and his collaborators, Wang, Birgitt Boschitsch, and Nan Sun, all mechanical engineering alumni, began a start-up venture.
With support from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ TechCelerator, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, the Rice Business Plan Competition and Y-Combinator, their company, spotLESS Materials, is already bringing the LESS coating to market.
“Our goal is to bring impactful technology to the market so everyone can benefit,” Wong said. “To maximize the impact of our coating technology, we need to get it out of the lab.”
Looking forward, the team hopes spotLESS Materials will play a role in sustaining the world’s water resources and continue expanding the reach of their technology.
“As a researcher in an academic setting, my goal is to invent things that everyone can benefit from,” Wong said. “As a Penn Stater, I see this culture being amplified through entrepreneurship, and I’m excited to contribute.”
This paper is behind a paywall. However, the researchers have made a brief video available,
There you have it. One random thought, that toilet image reminded me of the controversy over Marcel Duchamp, the Fountain, and who actually submitted a urinal for consideration as a piece of art (Jan. 23, 2019 posting). Hint: Some believe it was Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
This posting will focus on science, technology, the tragic consequence of bureaucratic and political bungling (the technology disaster that is* the Phoenix payroll system), and the puzzling lack of concern about some of the biggest upcoming technological and scientific changes in government and society in decades or more.
Setting the scene
After getting enough Liberal party members elected to the Canadian Parliament’s House of Commons to form a minority government in October 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new cabinet and some changes to the ‘science’ portfolios in November 2019. You can read more about the overall cabinet announcement in this November 20, 2019 news item by Peter Zimonjic on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) website, my focus will be the science and technology. (Note: For those who don’t know, there is already much discussion about how long this Liberal minority government will last. All i takes is a ‘loss of confidence’ motion and a majority of the official opposition and other parties to vote ‘no confidence’ and Canada will back into the throes of an election. Mitigating against a speedy new federal election,, the Conservative party [official opposition] needs to choose a new leader and the other parties may not have the financial resources for another federal election so soon after the last one.)
Getting back to now and the most recent Cabinet announcements, it seems this time around, there’s significantly less interest in science. Concerns about this were noted in a November 22, 2019 article by Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail,
Canadian researchers are raising concerns that the loss of a dedicated science minister signals a reduced voice for their agenda around the federal cabinet table.
…
“People are wondering if the government thinks its science agenda is done,” said Marie Franquin, a doctoral student in neuroscience and co-president of Science and Policy Exchange, a student-led research-advocacy group. “There’s still a lot of work to do.”
…
While not a powerful player within cabinet, Ms. Duncan [Kirsty Duncan] proved to be an ardent booster of Canada’s research community and engaged with its issues, including the muzzling of federal scientists by the former Harper government and the need to improve gender equity in the research ecosystem.
Among Ms. Duncan’s accomplishments was the appointment of a federal chief science adviser [sic] and the commissioning of a landmark review of Ottawa’s support for fundamental research, chaired by former University of Toronto president David Naylor
…
… He [Andre Albinati, managing principal with Earnscliffe Strategy Group] added the role of science in government is now further bolstered by chief science adviser [sic] Mona Nemer and a growing network of departmental science advisers [sic]. .
…
Mehrdad Hariri, president of the Canadian Science Policy Centre …, cautioned that the chief science adviser’s [sic] role was best described as “science for policy,” meaning the use of science advice in decision-making. He added that the government still needed a separate role like that filled by Ms. Duncan … to champion “policy for science,” meaning decisions that optimize Canada’s research enterprise.
…
There’s one other commentary (by CresoSá) but I’m saving it for later.
The science minister disappears
There is no longer a separate position for Science. Kirsty Duncan was moved from her ‘junior’ position as Minister of Science (and Sport) to Deputy Leader of the government. Duncan’s science portfolio has been moved over to Navdeep Bains whose portfolio evolved from Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (yes, there were two ‘ministers of science’) to Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. (It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Sadly, nobody from the Prime Minister’s team called to ask for my input on the matter.)
Science (and technology) have to be found elsewhere
There’s the Natural Resources (i.e., energy, minerals and metals, forests, earth sciences, mapping, etc.) portfolio which was led by Catherine McKenna who’s been moved over to Infrastructure and Communities. There have been mumblings that she was considered ‘too combative’ in her efforts. Her replacement in Natural Resources is Seamus O’Regan. No word yet on whether or not, he might also be ‘too combative’. Of course, it’s much easier if you’re female to gain that label. (You can read about the spray-painted slurs found on the windows of McKenna’s campaign offices after she was successfully re-elected. See: Mike Blanchfield’s October 24, 2019 article for Huffington Post and Brigitte Pellerin’s October 31, 2019 article for the Ottawa Citizen.)
There are other portfolios which can also be said to include science such as Environment and Climate Change which welcomes a new minister, Jonathan Wilkinson moving over from his previous science portfolio, Fisheries, Oceans, and Canadian Coast Guard where Bernadette Jordan has moved into place. Patti Hajdu takes over at Heath Canada (which despite all of the talk about science muzzles being lifted still has its muzzle in place). While it’s not typically considered a ‘science’ portfolio in Canada, the military establishment regardless of country has long been considered a source of science innovation; Harjit Sajjan has retained his Minister of National Defence portfolio.
Plus there are at least half a dozen other portfolios that can be described as having significant science and/or technology elements folded into their portfolios, e.g., Transport Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Safety and Emergency Preparedness, etc.
As I tend to focus on emerging science and technology, most of these portfolios are not ones I follow even on an irregular basis meaning I have nothing more to add about them in this posting. Mixing science and technology together in this posting is a reflection of how tightly the two are linked together. For example, university research into artificial intelligence is taking place on theoretical levels (science) and as applied in business and government (technology). Apologies to the mathematicians but this explanation is already complicated and I don’t think I can do justice to their importance.
Moving onto technology with a strong science link, this next portfolio received even less attention than the ‘science’ portfolios and I believe that’s undeserved.
The Minister of Digital Government and a bureaucratic débacle
These days people tend to take the digital nature of daily life for granted and that may be why this portfolio has escaped much notice. When the ministerial posting was first introduced, it was an addition to Scott Brison’s responsibilities as head of the Treasury Board. It continued to be linked to the Treasury Board when Joyce Murray* inherited Brison’s position, after his departure from politics. As of the latest announcement in November 2019, Digital Government and the Treasury Board are no longer tended to by the same cabinet member.
The new head of the Treasury Board is Jean-Yves Duclos while Joyce Murray has held on to the Minister of Digital Government designation. I’m not sure if the separation from the Treasury Board is indicative of the esteem the Prime Minister has for digital government or if this has been done to appease someone or some group, which means the digital government portfolio could well disappear in the future just as the ‘junior’ science portfolio did.
Regardless, here’s some evidence as to why I think ‘digital government’ is unfairly overlooked, from the minister’s December 13, 2019 Mandate Letter from the Prime Minister (Note: All of the emphases are mine],
I will expect you to work with your colleagues and through established legislative, regulatory and Cabinet processes to deliver on your top priorities. In particular, you will:
Lead work across government to transition to a more digital government in order to improve citizen service.
Oversee the Chief Information Officer and the Canadian Digital Service as they work with departments to develop solutions that will benefit Canadians and enhance the capacity to use modern tools and methodologies across Government.
Lead work to analyze and improve the delivery of information technology (IT) within government. This work will include identifying all core and at-risk IT systems and platforms. You will lead the renewal of SSC [Shared Services Canada which provides ‘modern, secure and reliable IT services so federal organizations can deliver digital programs and services to meet Canadians’ needs’] so that it is properly resourced and aligned to deliver common IT infrastructure that is reliable and secure.
Lead work to create a centre of expertise that brings together the necessary skills to effectively implement major transformation projects across government, including technical, procurement and legal expertise.
Support the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry in continuing work on the ethical use of data and digital tools like artificial intelligence for better government.
With the support of the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, accelerate progress on a new Government of Canada service strategy that aims to create a single online window for all government services with new performance standards.
Support the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development in expanding and improving the services provided by Service Canada.
Support the Minister of National Revenue on additional steps required to meaningfully improve the satisfaction of Canadians with the quality, timeliness and accuracy of services they receive from the Canada Revenue Agency.
Support the Minister of Public Services and Procurement in eliminating the backlog of outstanding pay issues for public servants as a result of the Phoenix Pay System.
Lead work on the Next Generation Human Resources and Pay System to replace the Phoenix Pay System and support the President of the Treasury Board as he actively engages Canada’s major public sector unions.
Support the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and the Minister of National Revenue to implement a voluntary, real-time e-payroll system with an initial focus on small businesses.
Fully implement lessons learned from previous information technology project challenges and failures [e,g, the Phoenix Payroll System], particularly around sunk costs and major multi-year contracts. Act transparently by sharing identified successes and difficulties within government, with the aim of constantly improving the delivery of projects large and small.
Encourage the use and development of open source products and open data, allowing for experimentation within existing policy directives and building an inventory of validated and secure applications that can be used by government to share knowledge and expertise to support innovation.
To be clear, the Minister of Digital Government is responsible (more or less) for helping to clean up a débacle, i.e., the implementation of the federal government’s Phoenix Payroll System and drive even more digitization and modernization of government data and processes.
They’ve been trying to fix the Phoenix problems since the day it was implemented in early 2016.That’s right, it will be four years in Spring 2020 when the Liberal government chose to implement a digital payroll system that had been largely untested and despite its supplier’s concerns.
That video was posted on September 24, 2018 (on YouTube) and, to my knowledge, the situation has not changed appreciably. A November 8, 2019 article by Tom Spears for the Ottawa Citizen details a very personal story about what can only be described as a failure on just about every level you can imagine,
Linda Deschâtelets’s death by suicide might have been prevented if the flawed Phoenix pay system hadn’t led her to emotional and financial ruin, a Quebec coroner has found.
Deschâtelets died in December of 2017, at age 52. At the time she was struggling with chronic pain and massive mortgage payments.
The fear of losing her home weighed heavily on her. In her final text message to one of her sons she said she had run out of energy and wanted to die before she lost her house in Val des Monts.
But Deschâtelets might have lived, says a report from coroner Pascale Boulay, if her employer, the Canada Revenue Agency, had shown a little empathy.
“During the final months before her death, she experienced serious financial troubles linked to the federal government’s pay system, Phoenix, which cut off her pay in a significant way, making her fear she would lose her house,” said Boulay’s report.
“A thorough analysis of this case strongly suggests that this death could have been avoided if a search for a solution to the current financial, psychological and medical situation had been made.”
Boulay found “there is no indication that management sought to meet Ms. Deschâtelets to offer her options. In addition, the lack of prompt follow-up in the processing of requests for information indicates a distressing lack of empathy for an employee who is experiencing real financial insecurity.”
Pay records “indeed show that she was living through serious financial problems and that she received irregular payments since the beginning of October 2017,” the coroner wrote.
As well, “her numerous online applications using the form for a compensation problem, in which she expresses her fear of not being able to make her mortgage payments and says that she wants a detailed statement of account, remain unanswered.”
On top of that, she had chronic back pain and sciatica and had been missing work. She was scheduled to get an ergonomically designed work area, but this change was never made even though she waited for months.
Money troubles kept getting worse.
She ran out of paid sick leave, and her department sent her an email to explain that she had automatically been docked pay for taking sick days. “In this same email, she was also advised that in the event that she missed additional days, other amounts would be deducted. No further follow-up with her was done,” the coroner wrote.
That email came eight days before her death.
…
Deschâtelets was also taking cocaine but this did not alter the fact that she genuinely risked losing her home over her financial problems, the coroner wrote.
“Given the circumstances, it is highly likely that Ms. Deschâtelets felt trapped” and ended her life “because of her belief that she would lose the house anyway. It was only a matter of time.”
The situation is “even more sad” because CRA had advisers on site who dealt with Phoenix issues, and could meet with employees, Boulay wrote.
“The federal government does a lot of promotion of workplace wellness. Surprisingly, these wellness measures are silent on the subject of financial insecurity at work,” Boulay wrote.
…
I feel sad for the family and indignant that there doesn’t seem to have been enough done to mitigate the hardships due to an astoundingly ill-advised decision to implement an untested payroll system for the federal government’s 280,000 or more civil servants.
Canada’s Senate reports back on Phoenix
I’m highlighting the Senate report here although there are also two reports from the Auditor General should you care to chase them down. From an August 1, 2018 article by Brian Jackson for IT World Canada,
In February 2016, in anticipation of the start of the Phoenix system rolling out, the government laid off 2,700 payroll clerks serving 120,000 employees. [I’m guessing the discrepancy in numbers of employees may be due to how the clerks were laid off, i.e., if they were load off in groups scheduled to be made redundant at different intervals.]
As soon as Phoenix was launched, problems began. By May 2018 there were 60,000 pay requests backlogged. Now the government has dedicated resources to explaining to affected employees the best way to avoid pay-related problems, and to file grievances related to the system.
“The causes of the failure are multiple, including, failing to manage the pay system in an integrated fashion with human resources processes, not conducting a pilot project, removing essential processing functions to stay on budget, laying off experienced compensation advisors, and implementing a pay system that wasn’t ready,” the Senate report states. “We are dismayed that this project proceeded with minimal independent oversight, including from central agencies, and that no one has accepted responsibility for the failure of Phoenix or has been held to account. We believe that there is an underlying cultural problem that needs to be addressed. The government needs to move away from a culture that plays down bad news and avoids responsibility, [emphasis mine] to one that encourages employee engagement, feedback and collaboration.”
…
There is at least one estimate that the Phoenix failure will cost $2.2 billion but I’m reasonably certain that figure does not include the costs of suicide, substance abuse, counseling, marriage breakdown, etc. (Of course, how do you really estimate the cost of a suicide or a marriage breakdown or the impact that financial woes have on children?)
Also concerning the Senate report, there is a July 31, 2018 news item on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news online,
“We are not confident that this problem has been solved, that the lessons have all been learned,” said Sen. André Pratte, deputy chair of the committee. [emphases mine]
I haven’t seen much coverage about the Phoenix Pay System recently in the mainstream media but according to a December 4, 2019 PSAC update,
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said the Phoenix situation could continue until 2023, yet government funding commitments so far have fallen significantly short of what is needed to end the Phoenix nightmare.
PSAC will continue pressing for enough funding and urgent action:
eliminate the over 200,000 cases in the pay issues backlog
compensate workers for their many hardships
stabilize Phoenix
properly develop, test and launch a new pay system
2023 would mean the débacle had a seven year lifespan, assuming everything has been made better by then.
Finally, there seems to be one other minister tasked with the Phoenix Pay System ‘fix’ (December 13, 2019 mandate letter) and that is the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Anita Anand. She is apparently a rookie MP (member of Parliament), which would make her a ‘cabinet rookie’ as well. Interesting choice.
More digital for federal workers and the Canadian public
Despite all that has gone before, the government is continuing in its drive to digitize itself as can be seen in the Minister of Digital Government’s mandate letter (excerpted above in ‘The Minister of Digital Government and some …’ subsection) and on the government’s Digital Government webspace,
Our digital shift to becoming more agile, open, and user-focused. We’re working on tomorrow’s Canada today.
I don’t find that particularly reassuring in light of the Phoenix Payroll System situation. However, on the plus side, Canada has a Digital Charter with 10 principles which include universal access, safety and security, control and consent, etc. Oddly, it looks like it’s the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry who are tasked with enhancing and advancing the charter. Shouldn’t this group also include the Minister of Digital Government?
The Minister of Digital Government, Joyce Murray, does not oversee a ministry and I think that makes this a ‘junior’ position in much the same way the Minister of Science was a junior position. It suggests a mindset where some of the biggest changes to come for both employees and the Canadian public are being overseen by someone without the resources to do the work effectively or the bureaucratic weight and importance to ensure the changes are done properly.
It’s all very well to have a section on the Responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) on your Digital Government webspace but there is no mention of ways and means to fix problems. For example, what happens to people who somehow run into an issue that the AI system can’t fix or even respond to because the algorithm wasn’t designed that way. Ever gotten caught in an automated telephone system? Or perhaps more saliently, what about the people who died in two different airplane accidents due to the pilots’ poor training and an AI system? (For a more informed view of the Boeing 737 Max, AI, and two fatal plane crashes see: a June 2, 2019 article by Rachel Kraus for Mashable.)
The only other minister whose mandate letter includes AI is the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Navdeep Bains (from his December 13, 2019 mandate letter),
With the support of the Minister of Digital Government, continue work on the ethical use of data and digital tools like artificial intelligence for better government.
So, the Minister of Digital Government, Joyce Murray, is supporting the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Navdeep Bains. That would suggest a ‘junior’ position wouldn’t it? If you look closely at the Minister of Digital Services’ mandate letter, you’ll see the Minister is almost always supporting another minister.
Where the Phoenix Pay System is concerned, the Minister of Digital Services is supporting the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, the previously mentioned rookie MP and rookie Cabinet member, Anita Anand. Interestingly, the employees’ union, PSAC, has decided (as of a November 20, 2019 news release) to ramp up its ad campaign regarding the Phoenix Pay System and its bargaining issues by targeting the Prime Minister and the new President of the Treasury Board, Jean-Yves Duclos. Guess whose mandate letter makes no mention of Phoenix (December 13, 2019 mandate letter for the President of the Treasury Board).
Open government, eh?
Putting a gift bow on a pile of manure doesn’t turn it into a gift (for most people, anyway) and calling your government open and/or transparent doesn’t necessarily make it so even when you amend your Access to Information Act to make it more accessible (August 22, 2019 Digital Government news release by Ruth Naylor).
One of the Liberal government’s most heavily publicized ‘open’ initiatives was the lifting of the muzzles put on federal scientists in the Environment and Natural Resources ministries. Those muzzles were put into place by a Conservative government and the 2015 Liberal government gained a lot of political capital from its actions. No one seemed to remember that Health Canada also had been muzzled. That muzzle had been put into place by one of the Liberal governments preceding the Conservative one. To date there is no word as to whether or not that muzzle has ever been lifted.
However, even in the ministries where the muzzles were lifted, it seems scientists didn’t feel free to speak even many months later (from a Feb 21, 2018 article by Brian Owens for Science),
More than half of government scientists in Canada—53%—do not feel they can speak freely to the media about their work, even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government eased restrictions on what they can say publicly, according to a survey released today by a union that represents more than 16,000 federal scientists.
That union—the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) based in Ottawa—conducted the survey last summer, a little more than a year and a half into the Trudeau government. It followed up on a similar survey the union released in 2013 at the height of the controversy over the then-Conservative government’s reported muzzling of scientists by preventing media interviews and curtailing travel to scientific conferences. The new survey found the situation much improved—in 2013, 90% of scientists felt unable to speak about their work. But the union says more work needs to be done. “The work needs to be done at the department level,” where civil servants may have been slow to implement political directives, PIPSC President Debi Daviau said. ”We need a culture change that promotes what we have heard from ministers.”
I found this a little chilling (from the PIPSC Defrosting Public Science; a 2017 survey of federal scientists webpage),
…
To better illustrate this concern, in 2013, The Big Chill revealed that 86% of respondents feared censorship or retaliation from their department or agency if they spoke out about a departmental decision or action that, based on their scientific knowledge, could bring harm to the public interest. In 2017, when asked the same question, 73% of respondents said they would not be able to do so without fear of censorship or retaliation – a mere 13% drop.
It’s possible things have improved but while the 2018 Senate report did not focus on scientists, it did highlight issues with the government’s openness and transparency or in their words: “… a culture that plays down bad news and avoids responsibility.” It seems the Senate is not the only group with concerns about government culture; so do the government’s employees (the scientists, anyway).
The recently announced Liberal cabinet brings what appear to be cosmetic changes to the science file. Former Science Minister Kirsty Duncan is no longer in it, which sparked confusion among casual observers who believed that the elimination of her position signalled the termination of the science ministry or the downgrading of the science agenda. In reality, science was and remains part of the renamed Ministry of Innovation, Science, and (now) Industry (rather than Economic Development), where Minister Navdeep Bains continues at the helm.
Arguably, these reactions show that appearances have been central [emphasis mine] to the modus operandi of this government. Minister Duncan was an active, and generally well-liked, champion for the Trudeau government’s science platform. She carried the torch of team science over the last four years, becoming vividly associated with the launch of initiatives such as the Fundamental Science Review, the creation of the chief science advisor position, and the introduction of equity provisions in the Canada Research Chairs program. She talked a good talk, but her role did not in fact give her much authority to change the course of science policy in the country. From the start, her mandate was mostly defined around building bridges with members of cabinet, which was likely good experience for her new role of deputy house leader.
Upon the announcement of the new cabinet, Minister Bains took to Twitter to thank Dr. Duncan for her dedication to placing science in “its rightful place back at the centre of everything our government does.” He indicated that he will take over her responsibilities, which he was already formally responsible for. Presumably, he will now make time to place science at the centre of everything the government does.
This kind of sloganeering has been common [emphasis mine] since the 2015 campaign, which seems to be the strategic moment the Liberals can’t get out of. Such was the real and perceived hostility of the Harper Conservatives to science that the Liberals embraced the role of enlightened advocates. Perhaps the lowest hanging fruit their predecessors left behind was the sheer absence of any intelligible articulation of where they stood on the science file, which the Liberals seized upon with gusto. Virtue signalling [emphasis mine] became a first line of response.
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When asked about her main accomplishments over the past year as chief science advisor at the recent Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa, Mona Nemer started with the creation of a network of science advisors across government departments. Over the past four years, the government has indeed not been shy about increasing the number of appointments with “science” in their job titles. That is not a bad thing. We just do not hear much about how “science is at the centre of everything the government does.” Things get much fuzzier when the conversation turns to the bold promises of promoting evidence-based decision making that this government has been vocal about. Queried on how her role has impacted policy making, Dr. Nemer suggested the question should be asked to politicians. [emphasis mine]
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I’m tempted to describe the ‘Digital Government’ existence and portfolio as virtue signalling.
Finally
There doesn’t seem to be all that much government interest in science or, even, technology for that matter. We have a ‘junior’ Minister of Science disappear so that science can become part of all the ministries. Frankly, I wish that science were integrated throughout all the ministries but when you consider the government culture, this move more easily lends itself to even less responsibility being taken by anyone. Take another look at the Canada’s Chief Science Advisor’s comment: “Queried on how her role has impacted policy making, Dr. Nemer suggested the question should be asked to politicians.” Meanwhile, we get a ‘junior Minister of Digital Government whose portfolio has the potential to affect Canadians of all ages and resident in Canada or not.
A ‘junior’ minister is not necessarily evil as Sá points out but I would like to see some indication that efforts are being made to shift the civil service culture and the attitude about how the government conducts its business and that the Minister of Digital Government will receive the resources and the respect she needs to do her job. I’d also like to see some understanding of how catastrophic a wrong move has already been and could be in the future along with options for how citizens are going to be making their way through this brave new digital government world and some options for fixing problems, especially the catastrophic ones.
*December 30, 2019 correction: After Scott Brison left his position as President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government in January 2019, Jane Philpott held the two positions until March 2019 when she left the Liberal Party. Carla Quatrough was acting head from March 4 – March 18, 2019 when Joyce Murray was appointed to the two positions which she held for eight months until November 2019 when, as I’ve noted, the ‘Minister of Digital Government’ was split from the ‘President of the Treasury Board’ appointment.
ETA January 28, 2020: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has an update on the Phoenix Pay System situation in a January 28, 2020 posting (supplied by The Canadian Press),
More than 98,000 civil servants may still owe the federal government money after being overpaid through the disastrous Phoenix pay system.
…
… the problems persist, despite the hiring of hundreds of pay specialists to work through a backlog of system errors.
The public service pay centre was still dealing with a backlog of about 202,000 complaints as of Dec. 24 [2019], down from 214,000 pay transactions that went beyond normal workload in November [2019].
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* Duplicate ‘is’ removed from sentence on July 2, 2024.
Part 1 featured my commentary on both Calestous Juma’s 2016 book, ”Innovation and Its Enemies; Why People Resist New Technologies” and Meanie Keene’s 2015 book, “Science in Wonderland; The scientific fairy tales of Victorian Britain.” Now for an emerging technology; genetically modified fish (AquAdvantage salmon) and my final comments on the books and the contrasting ways the adoption of new technologies and science is presented.
Fish
AquAdvanage salmon features as one of Calestous Juma’s contemporary emerging technologies. I mentioned the fish here in a May 20, 2016 posting when the fish was approved for consumption in Canada; this followed an earlier mention in a Dec. 4, 2015 posting when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the salmon for consumption in the US (from the 2015 posting),
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For the final excerpt from the December 2015 issue, there’s this about genetically engineered salmon,
Genetically Modified Salmon: Coming to a River Near You?
After nearly 20 years of effort, the Food and Drug Administration has approved genetically engineered salmon produced by AquaBounty Technologies, as fit for consumption and will not have to be labeled as genetically engineered. This salmon is capable of growing twice as fast as a non-engineered farmed salmon in as little as half of the time, however, it’s still likely to be at least two years before these salmon reach supermarkets. Some groups are concerned about the environmental implications should these salmon accidentally get released, or escape, into the wild, even though AquaBounty says its salmon will be all female and sterile.
AquaBounty’s salmon (background) has been genetically modified to grow bigger and faster than a conventional Atlantic salmon of the same age (foreground.) Courtesy of AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. [downloaded from http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/24/413755699/genetically-modified-salmon-coming-to-a-river-near-you]
The link from the newsletter points to a June 24, 2015 article by Jessie Rack for US National Public Radio’s Salt on the Table program (Note: Links have been removed),
One concern repeatedly raised by critics who don’t want the FDA to give the transgenic fish the green light: What would happen if these fish got out of the land-based facilities where they’re grown and escaped into the wild? Would genetically modified salmon push out their wild counterparts or permanently alter habitat? In a review paper published this month in the journal BioScience, scientists tackle that very question.
Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.
Genetically modified salmon contain the growth hormone gene from one fish, combined with the promoter of an antifreeze gene from another. This combination both increases and speeds up growth, so the salmon grow faster.
Altering a fish’s genes also changes other traits, the review found. Genetically modified salmon eat more food, spend more time near the surface of the water, and don’t tend to associate in groups. They develop at a dramatically faster rate, and their immune function is reduced.
But would these altered traits help genetically modified salmon outcompete wild salmon, while at the same time making them less likely to thrive in nature? It’s unclear, says Fredrik Sundström, one of the study authors and an ecologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
You may note the lead researcher for the literature review, a Canadian scientist was not quoted. This is likely due to the muzzle the Conservative government (still in power in June 2015 ) had applied to government scientists.
One last thing about AquAdvantage salmon, there is a very good Dec. 3, 2015 posting by Meredith Hamel focusing on their Canadian connections on her BiologyBizarre blog/magazine (Note: A link has been removed),
“For the first time anywhere in the world, a genetically engineered animal has been approved for human consumption” announced Peter Mansbridge on CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] news on November 20 [2015]. Members of society do not agree on how genetically modified fruits and vegetables should be labelled, if at all, but we are already moving on to genetically modified animals for human consumption. The AquAdvantage salmon by the US company AquaBounty can grow quicker and go to market twice as fast as regular farmed salmon using less feed. This genetically engineered salmon, whose fertilized eggs are produced at an inland facility in P.E.I [Prince Edward Island], Canada [emphasis mine] and raised at a facility in Panama, has been approved by the FDA after a long 20 year wait. AquAdvantage salmon could be the first genetically engineered meat we eat but opposition to approving it in Canada shows this salmon is not yet finished swimming against the current.
She goes on to describe in detail how these salmon are created (not excerpted here) and pinpoints another Canadian connection and political ramifications (Note: Links have been removed),
Head of Ocean Sciences Department at Memorial University [province of Newfoundland and Labrador], Garth Fletcher told The Star he was happy to see his creation get approved as he didn’t think approval would happen in his lifetime. Fletcher is no longer involved with AquaBounty but began working on this growth improved transgenic fish with other scientists back in 1982. On CBC news he said “the risk is as minimal as you could ever expect to get with any product.”
While the salmon is not approved in Canada for human consumption, some grocery store chains have already boycotted AquAdvantage salmon. The first step, the production of eggs in P.E.I has been approved by the federal government. Now there is a court battle with British Columbia’s Living Oceans Society and Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre together challenging the federal government’s approval. They are concerned AquAdvantage salmon would be toxic to the environment as an invasive species if they were to escape and that this was not adequately assessed. Secondly they argue that Environment Canada had a duty to inform the public but failed to do so.
Natalie Huneault at Environment Canada told the National Oberver, “there were no concerns identified to the environment or to the indirect health of Canadians due to the contained production of these GM fish eggs for export.”
Anastasia Bodnar over on Biology Fortified does an excellent job of going through the risks and mitigation of AquAdvantage salmon (here and here) both with respect to safety of eating this meat product as well as in preventing escapee transgenic fish from contaminating wild salmon populations. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada document containing assessment of risks to the environment and health are found here. Due to the containment facility and procedures there is extremely low likelihood that any fertile genetically modified salmon would escape to an area where it could survive and reproduce.
The failure of Environment Canada to properly inform and have a discussion with the public before approving the P.E.I fertilized egg production facility will certainly have increased public mistrust and fear of this genetically engineered salmon. I think that if the public feel that this step has already taken place behind their back, future discussion about approving genetically engineered salmon as safe to eat, is only going to be met with suspicion.
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Since the 2016 approval, AquAdvantage salmon, 4.5M tonnes has been sold in Canada according to an Aug. 8, 2017 article by Sima Shakeri for Huffington Post (Note: Links have been removed),
After decades of trying to get approval by in North America, genetically modified Atlantic salmon has been sold to consumers in Canada.
AquaBounty Technologies, an American company that produces the Atlantic salmon, confirmed it had sold 4.5 tonnes of the modified fish on August 4 [2017], the Scientific American reported.
The fish have been engineered with a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon to grow faster than regular salmon and require less food. They take about 18 months to reach market size, which is much quicker than the 30 months or so for conventional salmon.
The Washington Post wrote AquaBounty’s salmon also contains a gene from the ocean pout that makes the salmon produce the growth hormone gene all-year-round.
The company produces the eggs in a facility in P.E.I., which is currently being expanded, and then they’re shipped to Panama where the fish are raised.
Health Canada assessed the AquAdvantage salmon and concluded it “did not pose a greater risk to human health than salmon currently available on the Canadian market,” and that it would have no impact on allergies nor a difference in nutritional value compared to other farmed salmon.
Because of that, the AquAdvantage product is not required to be specially labelled as genetically modified, and is up to the discretion of retailers.
Scientific American has reproduced a piece by Emily Waltz (originally published August 4, 2017, the date Canadian consumers discovered the fish was being sold, in Nature). From the Aug. 7, 2017 Scientific American republication (Note: A link has been removed),
AquaBounty’s gruelling path from scientific discovery to market terrified others working in animal biotechnology, and almost put the company out of business on several occasions. Scientists first demonstrated the fast-growing fish in 1989. They gave it a growth-hormone gene from Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), along with genetic regulatory elements from a third species, the ocean pout (Zoarces americanus). The genetic modifications enable the salmon to produce a continuous low level of growth hormone.
AquaBounty formed around the technology in the early 1990s and approached regulators in the United States soon after. It then spent almost 25 years in regulatory limbo. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the salmon for consumption in November 2015, and Canadian authorities came to the same decision six months later. Neither country requires the salmon to be labelled as genetically engineered.
But unlike in Canada, political battles in the United States have stalled the salmon’s entry into the marketplace. …
Activists in both the United States and Canada have demanded that regulators reconsider their decisions, and some have filed lawsuits. …
Waltz includes this quote from an interested party,
The sale of the fish follows a long, hard-fought battle to navigate regulatory systems and win consumer acceptance. “Somebody’s got to be first and I’m glad it was them and not me,” says James West, a geneticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who co-founded AgGenetics, a start-up company in Nashville that is engineering cattle for the dairy and beef industries. “If they had failed, it might have killed the engineered livestock industry for a generation,” he says.
Canadians don’t necessarily respond in the same way that Americans do. The stem cell controversies to the south of us never reached the same fury and pitch although there were some significant impacts felt by the research community. Similarly the GMO (genetically modified organisms) controversies were felt here but in nowhere near the same degree as Europe. That doesn’t mean there won’t be problems this time but trying to determine how Canadians are likely to respond can be tricky especially when most of us don’t know much about GMO foods as Meham Abedi notes in her August 9, 2017 article for Global TV news (Note: Link have been removed),
On Wednesday [Aug. 9, 2017], an Angus Reid survey revealed that most Canadians admit they don’t know much about genetically modified organisms, but still want more transparency.
Of the 1,512 respondents, 24 per cent said they had “never heard of them” or only heard the term, 60 per cent said they “know a little bit about” GMO food, while only 16 per cent were “very familiar” with what it entails.
However, 83 per cent of Canadians surveyed said at least some GMO food labelling should [be] mandatory in grocery stores.
The report echos 2016 Health Canada findings that Canadians’ opinions on the products were defined by “confusion, misinformation, and generally low awareness/understanding.”
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The Angus Reid survey was conducted between June 8-13, 2017 [emphasis mine], by 1,512 Canadian adults. It is considered accurate +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
It’s hard to know how “confusion, misinformation, and generally low awareness/understanding,” is going to play out but it doesn’t seem a good idea to just sneak GMO salmon into the Canadian marketplace. Notably, Juma argues for more public education in his book and while it might not smooth the path as much as he and other innovation enthusiasts might prefer, it certainly couldn’t hurt.
It might also be useful to consider the idea that not all resistance is bad and to be avoided. Tess Doezema in her April 26, 2017 article (Skepticism About Biotechnology Isn’t Anti-Science) presents a persuasive argument suggesting that public concerns don’t deserve to be dismissed (Note: Links have been removed),
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To many in bioscience and biotechnology circles, this [AquAdvantage salmon] is a case of politics contaminating science. In an open letter to President Obama in 2014, a group of “concerned international scientists and global technology company executives” argue this point:
The American people, and indeed all people everywhere, are best served by a trusted objective regulatory process truly based on sound science, a system which can be counted upon to evaluate and act on the applications it receives without fear of political interference.
These scientists and others offer a picture of a Manichean world divided into those who are for scientific and technological progress and those who are against it—a representation of the world that we have been seeing more and more of lately in reports of a “war on science.” But drawing this line is dangerous. The real problem here is the regulatory process itself, which forces dissent to take the narrow form of challenges to scientific data and methodology and ignores other questions about what’s at stake.
The FDA approval process for the AquAdvantage salmon took longer and included more opportunities for public comment than most products the FDA reviews. This unique openness to public input was balanced by a careful parsing of what counts as scientifically and contextually relevant and what does not. The agency received 38,000 comments in response to its draft assessment alone, but it determined that just 90 were worth considering [emphases mine]. The remaining comments were discounted as irrelevant because they did not directly address the details of the regulation process, or they raised issues beyond the mandate of the agency. These disregarded comments focused on a wide range of concerns, including patenting and ownership regimes of seed and crops; how deploying genetically modified corn and soy would affect the United States’ image around the world; continuing failures of existing market configurations to address inequality and food distribution; and the long history of multinational corporations central to the commercialization of biotechnologies, such as Monsanto, intentionally obscuring the negative impacts of their chemical products and byproducts while undermining human health.
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Some might read the vast public preoccupation with a broad set of social, political, and economic issues as the contamination of science with politics. But I would suggest that this is actually a case of the reverse problem: seemingly endless conflict around the AquAdvantage salmon reflects the limitation of using narrow scientific terms to address questions of broad social, political, and economic significance. As things stand, the only legitimate way to engage in debates about the entry of the AquAdvantage salmon and other genetically modified organisms into our environments, meals, intellectual property regimes, and beyond is to contest its approval at the level of regulatory science. When the system asks the public to limit objections to narrow technical concerns, it undermines regulatory legitimacy and stultifies democratic debate—and perhaps most importantly, it contributes to the problematic discourse around science itself. When our modes of public deliberation strictly define what counts as a legitimate view on these issues, we end up portraying a good portion of the population as “against science,” when that in fact could not be further from the truth.
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To position science on one side of these debates is not only patently false but detrimental to public discourse.
… Synthetic biology is billed as having the potential to transform the world in a way that will disrupt prevailing economic and geopolitical paradigms and “reshape the very fabric of life.” The one thing both sides of the fishy debate seem to agree on is that the AquAdvantage salmon is a “pioneer” technology, and what happens to this fish could set the stage for the role that biotechnology will play in our food system in the century to come. As one commentator opined for the New York Times:
We should all be rooting for the agency to do the right thing and approve the AquAdvantage salmon. It’s a healthy and relatively cheap food source that, as global demand for fish increases, can take some pressure off our wild fish stocks. But most important, a rejection will have a chilling effect on biotechnological innovation in this country. …
This framing suggests that biotechnological innovation is a necessary and unmitigated good. But for many, the prospect of a world radically altered by biotechnology conjures past experiences in which scientific “progress” didn’t go as planned—like the devastation and political instability ushered in by nuclear weapons. Similarly, to some, a dam looks like progress, development, and economic prosperity. But to others, it looks like the violent end of a way of life, heralded by the destruction of ecosystems and entire species.
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Characterizing legitimate concerns about what kinds of technologies enter and help shape our world as “anti-science” is more likely to alienate than inspire “everyday Americans to identify with this vision of what science can do, and to believe in it.”
… perhaps we can make it productive in one way. Understanding the limitations of the process can help us think critically about how decision-making about synthetic biology going forward might be more open to a broader set of concerns and voices much earlier in the innovation process. The way forward is not drawing battle lines between those who are “for” or “against” science and closing down regulatory processes to all but the narrowest risk-based considerations. Rather, we should be forming and expanding spaces for a wide range of participants in creatively considering how to solve society’s biggest challenges. We need new ways of thinking and talking about technological promise and possibility in the world that we live in. [emphasis mine]
While Doersma is appealing to a US audience, her argument could be used internationally.
Final comments
Juma’s “Enemies of Innovation” and Keene’s “Science in Wonderland” are both worthwhile reads but it should be noted that Juma’s is the more ambitious. Keene is looking back and expanding the perspective in an area of previously mined children’s literature which hints at possible implications for our own time period..
For example, I think contemporary audiences might want to consider how much science, technology, and mathematics finds its way into our ‘fairy tales’ or super hero, space adventure, cartoons,, and other popular stories of today. Iron Man and his colleagues in one of the Avengers’ movies faced off with a robot/artificial intelligence entity, Ultron, suggesting potential existential risk; Star Trek’s impact on today’s technologies is widely acknowledged, and The Simpsons , a US animated programme, regularly embeds mathematics in its stories.
Juma examines history while attempting to extrapolate lessons for the future.It’s a courageous and worthwhile effort. While I’m not entirely comfortable with his top-down approach he knits together a comprehensive programme for policy makers and makes two point that I believe are too often overlooked, more agility is needed and these are global issues.
“Closer to the Market” Roadmap (CTTM) now finalised
Hot off the press! the Cluster’s “Closer to the Market” Roadmap (CTTM) is a multi-dimensional, stepwise plan targeting a framework to deliver safe nano-enabled products to the market. After some years of discussions, several consultations of a huge number of experts in the nanosafety-field, conferences at which the issue of market implementation of nanotechnologies was talked about, writing hours/days, and finally two public consultation rounds, the CTTM is now finalized.
As stated in the Executive Summary: “Nano-products and nano-enabled applications need a clear and easy-to-follow human and environmental safety framework for the development along the innovation chain from initial idea to market and beyond that facilitates navigation through the complex regulatory and approval processes under which different product categories fall.
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Download it here, and get involved in its implementation through the Cluster!
Authors: Andreas Falk* 1, Christa Schimpel1, Andrea Haase3, Benoît Hazebrouck4, Carlos Fito López5, Adriele Prina-Mello6, Kai Savolainen7, Adriënne Sips8, Jesús M. Lopez de Ipiña10, Iseult Lynch11, Costas Charitidis12, Visser Germ13
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NanoDefine hosts Synergy Workshop with NSC projects
NanoDefine organised the 2nd Nanosafety Cluster (NSC) Synergy Workshop at the Netherlands House for Education and Research in Brussels on 2nd February 2016. The aim was to identify overlaps and synergies existing between different projects that could develop into
outstanding cooperation opportunities.
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One central issue was the building of a common ontology and a European framework for data management and analysis, as planned within eNanoMapper, to facilitate a closer interdisciplinary collaboration between NSC projects and to better address the need for proper data storage, analysis and sharing (Open Access).
Unexpectedly, there’s a Canadian connection,
Discovering protocols for nanoparticles: the soils case NanoFASE WP7 & NanoSafety Cluster WG3 Exposure
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In NanoFASE, of course, we focus on the exposure to nanomaterials. Having consistent and meaningful protocols to characterize the fate of nanomaterials in different environments is therefore of great interest to us. Soils and sediments are in this respect very cumbersome. Also in the case of conventional chemicals has the development of protocols for fate description in terrestrial systems been a long route.
The special considerations of nanomaterials make this job even harder. For instance, how does one handle the fact that the interaction between soils and nanoparticles is always out of equilibrium? How does one distinguish between the nanoparticles that are still mobile and those that are attached to soil?
In the case of conventional chemicals, a single measurement of a filtered soil suspension often suffices to find the mobile fraction, as long one is sure that equilibrium has been attained. Equilibrium never occurs in the case of nanoparticles, and the distinction between attached/suspended particles is analytically less clear to do.
Current activity in NanoFASE is focusing at finding protocols to characterize this interaction. Not only does the protocol have to provide meaningful parameters that can be used, e.g. in modelling, but also the method itself should be fast and cheap enough so that a lot of data can be collected in a reasonable amount of time. NanoFASE is in a good position to do this, because of its focus on fate and because of the many international collaborators.
For instance, the Swedish Agricultural University (Uppsala) is collaborating with McGill University (Montreal, Canada [emphasis mine]), an advisory partner to NanoFASE, in developing the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] protocol for column tests (OECD test nr 312: “Leaching in soil columns”). The effort is led by Yasir Sultan from Environment Canada and by Karlheinz Weinfurtner from the Frauenhofer institute in Germany. Initial results show the transport of nanomaterials in soil columns to be very limited.
The OECD protocol therefore does not often lead to measurable breakthrough curves that can be modelled to provide information about nanomaterial mobility in soils and most likely requires adaptations to account for the relatively low mobility of typical pristine nanomaterials.
OECD 312 prescribes to use 40 cm columns, which is most likely too long to show a breakthrough in the case of nanoparticles. Testing in NanoFASE will therefore focus on working with shorter columns and also investigating the effect of the flow speed.
The progress and the results of this action will be reported on our website (www.nanofase.eu).
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ENM [engineered nanomaterial] Transformation in and Release from Managed Waste Streams (WP5): The NanoFASE pilot Wastewater Treatment Plant is up and running and producing sludge – soon we’ll be dosing with nanoparticles to test “real world” aging.
Now, wastewater,
ENM [engineered nanomaterial] Transformation in and Release from Managed Waste Streams (WP5): The NanoFASE pilot Wastewater Treatment Plant is up and running and producing sludge – soon we’ll be dosing with nanoparticles to test “real world” aging.
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WP5 led by Ralf Kaegi of EAWAG [Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology] (Switzerland) will establish transformation and release rates of ENM during their passage through different reactors. We are focusing on wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), solid waste and dedicated sewage sludge incinerators as well as landfills (see figure below). Additionally, lab-scale experiments using pristine and well characterized materials, representing the realistic fate relevant forms at each stage, will allow us to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the transformation processes in waste treatment reactors. Our experimental results will feed directly into the development of a mathematical model describing the transformation and transfer of ENMs through the investigated reactors.
I’m including this since I’ve been following the ‘silver nanoparticle story’ for some time,
NanoMILE publication update: NanoMILE on the air and on the cover
Dramatic differences in behavior of nano-silver during the initial wash cycle and for its further dissolution/transformation potential over time depending on detergent composition and form.
In an effort to better relate nanomaterial aging procedures to those which they are most likely to undergo during the life cycle of nano-enhanced products, in this paper we describe the various transformations which are possible when exposing Ag engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) to a suite of commercially available washing detergents (Figure 1). While Ag ENP transformation and washing of textiles has received considerable attention in recent years, our study is novel in that we (1) used several commercially available detergents allowing us to estimate the various changes possible in individual homes and commercial washing settings; (2) we have continued method development of state of the art nanometrology techniques, including single particle ICP-MS, for the detection and characterization of ENPs in complex media; and (3) we were able to provide novel additions to the knowledge base of the environmental nanotechnology research community both in terms of the analytical methods (e.g. the first time ENP aggregates have been definitively analyzed via single particle ICP-MS) and broadening the scope of “real world” conditions that should be considered when understanding AgENP through their life cycle.
Our findings, which were recently published in Environmental Science and Toxicology (2015, 49: 9665), indicate that the washing detergent chemistry causes dramatic differences in ENP behavior during the initial wash cycle and has ramifications for the dissolution/transformation potential of the Ag ENPs over time (see Figure 2). The use of silver as an antimicrobial treatment in textiles continues to garner considerable attention. Last year we published a manuscript in ACS Nano that considered how various silver treatments to textiles (conventional and nano) both release nano-sized material after the wash cycle with similar chemical characteristics. That study essentially conveyed that multiple silver treatments would become more similar through the product life cycle. Our newest work expands this by investigating one silver ENP under various washing conditions thereby creating more varied silver products as an end result.
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Fascinating stuff if you’ve been following the issues around nanotechnology and safety.
Towards the end of the newsletter on pp. 46-48, they list opportunities for partnerships, collaboration, and research posts and they list websites where you can check out job opportunities. Good Luck!
I’ve grumbled more than once or twice about the seemingly secret society that is Canada’s nanotechnology effort (especially health, safety, and environment issues) and the fact that I get most my information from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) documents. That said, thank you to Lynne Bergeson’s April 8, 2016 post on Nanotechnology Now for directions to the latest OECD nano document,
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently posted a March 29, 2016, report entitled Developments in Delegations on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials — Tour de Table. … The report compiles information, provided by Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN) participating delegations, before and after the November 2015 WPMN meeting, on current developments on the safety of manufactured nanomaterials.
It’s an international roundup that includes: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, U.S., and the European Commission (EC), as well as the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC) and International Council on Animal Protection in OECD Programs (ICAPO).
CANADA
National developments on human health and environmental safety including recommendations, definitions, or discussions related to adapting or applying existing regulatory systems or the drafting of new laws/ regulations/amendments/guidance materials A consultation document on a Proposed Approach to Address Nanoscale Forms of Substances on the Domestic Substances List was published with a public comment period ending on May 17, 2015. The proposed approach outlines the Government’s plan to address nanomaterials considered in commerce in Canada (on Canada’s public inventory). The proposal is a stepwise approach to acquire and evaluate information, followed by any necessary action. A follow-up stakeholder workshop is being planned to discuss next steps and possible approaches to prioritize future activities. The consultation document is available at: http://www.ec.gc.ca/lcpe-cepa/default.asp?lang=En&n=1D804F45-1
A mandatory information gathering survey was published on July 25, 2015. The purpose of the survey is to collect information to determine the commercialstatus of certain nanomaterials in Canada. The survey targets 206 substances considered to be potentially in commerce at the nanoscale. The list of 206 substances was developed using outcomes from the Canada-United States Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) Nanotechnology Initiative to identify nanomaterial types. These nanomaterial types were cross-referenced with the Domestic Substances List to develop a preliminary list of substances which are potentially intentionally manufactured at the nanoscale. The focus of the survey aligns with the Proposed Approach to Address Nanoscale Forms of Substances on the Domestic Substances List (see above) and certain types of nanomaterials were excluded during the development of the list of substances. The information being requested by the survey includes substance identification, volumes, and uses. This information will feed into the Government’s proposed approach to address nanomaterials on the Domestic Substances List. Available at: http://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2015/2015-07-25/html/notice-avis-eng.php
Information on:
a.risk assessment decisions, including the type of: (a) nanomaterials assessed; (b) testing recommended; and (c) outcomes of the assessment;
Four substances were notified to the program since the WPMN14 – three surface modified substances and one inorganic substance. No actions, including additional data requests, were taken due to low expected exposures in accordance with the New Substances Notifications Regulations (Chemicals and Polymers) (NSNR) for two of the substances. Two of the substances notified were subject to a Significant New Activity Notice. A Significant New Activity notice is an information gathering tool used to require submission of additional information if it is suspected that a significant new activity may result in the substance becoming toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999.
b.Proposals, or modifications to previous regulatory decisions
As part of the Government’s Chemicals Management Plan, a review is being undertaken for all substances which have been controlled through Significant New Activity (SNAc) notices (see above). As part of this activity, the Government is reviewing past nanomaterials SNAc notices to see if new information is available to refine the scope and information requirements. As a result of this review, 9 SNAc notices previously in place for nanomaterials have been rescinded. This work is ongoing, and a complete review of all nanomaterial SNAcs is currently planned to be completed in 2016.
Information related to good practice documents
The Canada-led, ISO standards project, ISO/DTR 19716 Nanotechnologies — Characterization of cellulose nanocrystals, [emphasis mine] initiated in April 2014, is now at Committee Draft (CD) 3-month ISO ballot, closing Aug 31, 2015. Ballot comments will be addressed during JWG2 Measurement and Characterization working group meetings at the 18th Plenary of ISO/TC229, Nanotechnologies, being held in Edmonton, Alberta, Sep. 28 – Oct. 2, 2015.
Research programmes or strategies designed to address human health and/ or environmental safety aspects of nanomaterials
Scientific research
Environment Canada continues to support various academic and departmental research projects. This research has to date included studying fate and effects of nanomaterials in the aquatic, sediment, soil, and air compartments. Funding in fiscal 2015-16 continues to support such projects, including sub-surface transportation, determining key physical-chemical parameters to predict ecotoxicity, and impacts of nano-silver [silver nanoparticles] addition to a whole lake ecosystem [Experimental Lakes Area?]. Environment Canada has also partnered with the National Research Council of Canada recently to initiate a project on the development of test methods to identify surfaces of nanomaterials for the purposes of regulatory identification and to support risk assessments. In addition, Environment Canada is working with academic laboratories in Canada and Germany to prepare guidance to support testing of nanoparticles using the OECD Test Guideline for soil column leaching.
Health Canada continues its research efforts to investigate the effects of surface-modified silica nanoparticles. The aims of these projects are to: (1) study the importance of size and surface functionalization; and (2) provide a genotoxic profile and to identify mechanistic relationships of particle properties to elicited toxic responses. A manuscript reporting the in vitro genotoxic, cytotoxic and transcriptomic responses following exposure to silica nanoparticles has recently been submitted to a peer reviewed journal and is currently undergoing review. Additional manuscripts reporting the toxicity results obtained to date are in preparation.
Information on public/stakeholder consultations;
A consultation document on a Proposed Approach to Address Nanoscale Forms of Substances on the Domestic Substances List was published with a public comment period ending on May 17, 2015 (see Question 1). Comments were received from approximately 20 stakeholders representing industry and industry associations, as well as non-governmental organizations. These comments will inform decision making to address nanomaterials in commerce in Canada.
Information on research or strategies on life cycle aspects of nanomaterials
Canada, along with Government agencies in the United States, Non-Governmental Organizations and Industry, is engaged in a project to look at releases of nanomaterials from industrial consumer matrices (e.g., coatings). The objectives of the NanoRelease Consumer Products project are to develop protocols or
methods (validated through interlaboratory testing) to measure releases of nanomaterials from solid matrices as a result of expected uses along the material life cycle for consumer products that contain the nanomaterials. The project is currently in the advanced stages of Phase 3 (Interlaboratory Studies). The objectives of Phase 3 of the project are to develop robust methods for producing and collecting samples of CNT-epoxy and CNT-rubber materials under abrasion and weathering scenarios, and to detect and quantify, to the extent possible, CNT release fractions. Selected laboratories in the US, Canada, Korea and the European Community are finalising the generation and analysis of sanding and weathering samples and the results are being collected in a data hub for further interpretation and analysis.
Additional details about the project can be found at the project website: http://www.ilsi.org/ResearchFoundation/RSIA/Pages/NanoRelease1.aspx
Under the OECD Working Party on Resource Productivity and Waste (WPRPW), the expert group on waste containing nanomaterials has developed four reflection papers on the fate of nanomaterials in waste treatment operations. Canada prepared the paper on the fate of nanomaterials in landfills; Switzerland on the recycling of waste containing nanomaterials; Germany on the incineration of waste containing nanomaterials; and France on nanomaterials in wastewater treatment. The purpose of these papers is to provide an overview of the existing knowledge on the behaviour of nanomaterials during disposal operations and identify the information gaps. At the fourth meeting of the WPRPW that took place on 12-14 November 2013, three of the four reflection papers were considered by members. Canada’s paper was presented and discussed at the fifth meeting of the WPRPRW that took place on 8-10 December 2014. The four papers were declassified by EPOC in June 2015, and an introductory chapter was prepared to draw these papers together. The introductory chapter and accompanying papers will be published in Fall 2015. At the sixth meeting of the WPRPW in June – July 2015, the Secretariat presented a proposal for an information-sharing platform that would allow delegates to share research and documents related to nanomaterials. During a trial phase, delegates will be asked to use the platform and provide feedback on its use at the next meeting of the WPRPW in December 2015. This information-sharing platform will also be accessible to delegates of the WPMN.
Information related to exposure measurement and exposure mitigation.
Canada and the Netherlands are co-leading a project on metal impurities in carbon nanotubes. A final version of the report is expected to be ready for WPMN16. All research has been completed (e.g. all components are published or in press and there was a presentation by Pat Rasmussen to SG-08 at the Face-to-Face Meeting in Seoul June 2015). The first draft will be submitted to the SG-08 secretariat in autumn 2015. Revisions will be based on early feedback from SG-08 participants. The next steps depend on this feedback and amount of revision required.
Information on past, current or future activities on nanotechnologies that are being done in co-operation with non-OECD countries.
A webinar between ECHA [European Chemicals Agency], the US EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and Canada was hosted by Canada on April 16, 2015. These are regularly scheduled trilateral discussions to keep each other informed of activities in respective jurisdictions.
In March 2015, Health Canada hosted 3 nanotechnology knowledge transfer sessions targeting Canadian government research and regulatory communities working in nanotechnology. These sessions were an opportunity to share information and perspectives on the current state of science supporting the regulatory oversight of nanomaterials with Government. Presenters provided detailed outputs from the OECD WPMN including: updates on OECD test methods and guidance documents; overviews of physical-chemical properties, as well as their relevance to toxicological testing and risk assessment; ecotoxicity and fate test methods; human health risk assessment and alternative testing strategies; and exposure measurement and mitigation. Guest speakers included Dr Richard C. Pleus Managing Director and Director of Intertox, Inc and Dr. Vladimir Murashov Special Assistant on Nanotechnology to the Director of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
On March 4-5, 2015, Industry Canada and NanoCanada co-sponsored “Commercializing Nanotechnology in Canada”, a national workshop that brought together representatives from industry, academia and government to better align Canada’s efforts in nanotechnology. This workshop was the first of its kind in Canada. It also marked the official launch of NanoCanada (http://nanocanada.com/), a national initiative that is bringing together stakeholders from across Canada to bridge the innovation gap and stimulates emerging technology solutions.
It’s nice to get an update about what’s going on. Despite the fact this report was published in 2016 the future tense is used in many of the verbs depicting actions long since accomplished. Maybe this was a cut-and-paste job?
Moving on, I note the mention of the Canada-led, ISO standards project, ISO/DTR 19716 Nanotechnologies — Characterization of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). For those not familiar with CNC, the Canadian government has invested hugely in this material derived mainly from trees, in Canada. Other countries and jurisdictions have researched nanocellulose derived from carrots, bananas, pineapples, etc.
Finally, it was interesting to find out about the existence of NanoCanada. In looking up the Contact Us page, I noticed Marie D’Iorio’s name. D’Iorio, as far as I’m aware, is still the Executive Director for Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) or here (one of the National Research Council of Canada’s institutes). I have tried many times to interview someone from the NINT (Nils Petersen, the first NINT ED and Martha Piper, a member of the advisory board) and more recently D’Iorio herself only to be be met with a resounding silence. However, there’s a new government in place, so I will try again to find out more about the NINT, and, this time, NanoCanada.
The NISENet’s (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) December 2015 issue features synthetic biology, goo, and genetically engineered salmon. From the December 2015 issue,
We will be sending out 200 free Building with Biology physical kits to informal science educators and research institutions to host a Summer 2016 Building with Biology event. The primary focus of these nationwide events is to create conversations between scientists and the public through hands-on activities and public forums. The deadline to submit an application for a Building with Biology kit is February 1, 2016.
I’m not sure if your location matters or if you must be a US-based organization or scientist to apply.
The physics of oobleck is nothing short of amazing; a simple concoction that acts as both a liquid and a solid. This phenomenon is called shear force thickening and scientists are still trying to understand exactly how it works. There are two contending theories: the prevailing theory is supported by fluid dynamics as the force behind the fluid becoming a solid, while the other idea is that contract forces like friction help keep particles locked together. Figuring out which theory is correct will not only affect the way materials such as body armor and spacesuits, helmets, and cement are made but will also potentially save lives.
Here’s a little more about the latest research on ‘oobleck’ from a Nov. 24, 2015 article by Lydia Chain for Popular Science,
There’s an experiment you may have done in high school: When you mix cornstarch with water—a concoction colloquially called oobleck—and give it a stir, it acts like a liquid. But scrape it quickly or hit it hard, and it stiffens up into a solid. If you set the right pace, you can even run on top of a pool of the stuff. This phenomenon is called shear force thickening, and scientists have been trying to understand how it happens for decades.
…
There’s an experiment you may have done in high school: When you mix cornstarch with water—a concoction colloquially called oobleck—and give it a stir, it acts like a liquid. But scrape it quickly or hit it hard, and it stiffens up into a solid. If you set the right pace, you can even run on top of a pool of the stuff. This phenomenon is called shear force thickening, and scientists have been trying to understand how it happens for decades.
…
“The debate has been raging, and we’ve been wracking our brains to think of a method to conclusively go one way or the other,” says Itai Cohen, a physicist at Cornell University. He and his team recently ran a new experiment that seems to point to friction as the driving cause of shear thickening.
They decided to perform what is called a flow reversal experiment. They put a cone into a dish full of the fluid and measured the torque it takes to spin the cone. As shear thickening begins, it gets harder to spin the cone. Then they suddenly reverse the spin direction. The idea is that if contact force is the cause of shear thickening, then the moment the spinning reverses, the particles will pop free of each other, and there will be an immediate drop in the magnitude of torque. If hydrodynamic clusters were the main cause of shear thickening, the torque wouldn’t drop.
The problem is that the force has to be measured immediately, and there wasn’t a machine that could make that measurement fast enough to see the effect. So Cohen’s team partnered with Gareth McKinley at MIT, who altered the machine to get the data more quickly. When they tested simple solutions they had made, they saw that characteristic drop in force after they reversed the flow. Further modeling suggested that friction might be the contact force at play.
“We are giddy with excitement,” Cohen says.
…
Chain’s article includes more details and images (.jpegs and .gifs) demonstrating the principles at work.
For the final excerpt from the December 2015 issue, there’s this about genetically engineered salmon,
Genetically Modified Salmon: Coming to a River Near You?
After nearly 20 years of effort, the Food and Drug Administration has approved genetically engineered salmon produced by AquaBounty Technologies, as fit for consumption and will not have to be labeled as genetically engineered. This salmon is capable of growing twice as fast as a non-engineered farmed salmon in as little as half of the time, however, it’s still likely to be at least two years before these salmon reach supermarkets. Some groups are concerned about the environmental implications should these salmon accidentally get released, or escape, into the wild, even though AquaBounty says its salmon will be all female and sterile.
AquaBounty’s salmon (background) has been genetically modified to grow bigger and faster than a conventional Atlantic salmon of the same age (foreground.) Courtesy of AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. [downloaded from http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/24/413755699/genetically-modified-salmon-coming-to-a-river-near-you]
The link from the newsletter points to a June 24, 2015 article by Jessie Rack for US National Public Radio’s Salt on the Table program (Note: Links have been removed),
One concern repeatedly raised by critics who don’t want the FDA to give the transgenic fish the green light: What would happen if these fish got out of the land-based facilities where they’re grown and escaped into the wild? Would genetically modified salmon push out their wild counterparts or permanently alter habitat? In a review paper published this month in the journal BioScience, scientists tackle that very question.
Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.
Genetically modified salmon contain the growth hormone gene from one fish, combined with the promoter of an antifreeze gene from another. This combination both increases and speeds up growth, so the salmon grow faster.
Altering a fish’s genes also changes other traits, the review found. Genetically modified salmon eat more food, spend more time near the surface of the water, and don’t tend to associate in groups. They develop at a dramatically faster rate, and their immune function is reduced.
But would these altered traits help genetically modified salmon outcompete wild salmon, while at the same time making them less likely to thrive in nature? It’s unclear, says Fredrik Sundström, one of the study authors and an ecologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
You may note the lead researcher for the literature review, a Canadian scientist was not quoted. This is likely due to the muzzle the Conservative government (still in power in June 2015 ) had applied to government scientists.
One last thing about AquAdvantage salmon, there is a very good Dec. 3, 2015 posting by Meredith Hamel focusing on their Canadian connections on her BiologyBizarre blog/magazine (Note: A link has been removed),
“For the first time anywhere in the world, a genetically engineered animal has been approved for human consumption” announced Peter Mansbridge on CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] news on November 20 [2015]. Members of society do not agree on how genetically modified fruits and vegetables should be labelled, if at all, but we are already moving on to genetically modified animals for human consumption. The AquAdvantage salmon by the US company AquaBounty can grow quicker and go to market twice as fast as regular farmed salmon using less feed. This genetically engineered salmon, whose fertilized eggs are produced at an inland facility in P.E.I [Prince Edward Island], Canada [emphasis mine] and raised at a facility in Panama, has been approved by the FDA after a long 20 year wait. AquAdvantage salmon could be the first genetically engineered meat we eat but opposition to approving it in Canada shows this salmon is not yet finished swimming against the current.
She goes on to describe in detail how these salmon are created (not excerpted here) and pinpoints another Canadian connection and political ramifications (Note: Links have been removed),
Head of Ocean Sciences Department at Memorial University [province of Newfoundland and Labrador], Garth Fletcher told The Star he was happy to see his creation get approved as he didn’t think approval would happen in his lifetime. Fletcher is no longer involved with AquaBounty but began working on this growth improved transgenic fish with other scientists back in 1982. On CBC news he said “the risk is as minimal as you could ever expect to get with any product.”
While the salmon is not approved in Canada for human consumption, some grocery store chains have already boycotted AquAdvantage salmon. The first step, the production of eggs in P.E.I has been approved by the federal government. Now there is a court battle with British Columbia’s Living Oceans Society and Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre together challenging the federal government’s approval. They are concerned AquAdvantage salmon would be toxic to the environment as an invasive species if they were to escape and that this was not adequately assessed. Secondly they argue that Environment Canada had a duty to inform the public but failed to do so.
Natalie Huneault at Environment Canada told the National Oberver, “there were no concerns identified to the environment or to the indirect health of Canadians due to the contained production of these GM fish eggs for export.”
Anastasia Bodnar over on Biology Fortified does an excellent job of going through the risks and mitigation of AquAdvantage salmon (here and here) both with respect to safety of eating this meat product as well as in preventing escapee transgenic fish from contaminating wild salmon populations. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada document containing assessment of risks to the environment and health are found here. Due to the containment facility and procedures there is extremely low likelihood that any fertile genetically modified salmon would escape to an area where it could survive and reproduce.
The failure of Environment Canada to properly inform and have a discussion with the public before approving the P.E.I fertilized egg production facility will certainly have increased public mistrust and fear of this genetically engineered salmon. I think that if the public feel that this step has already taken place behind their back, future discussion about approving genetically engineered salmon as safe to eat, is only going to be met with suspicion.
Hamel’s piece is well worth reading if you (Canadian or otherwise) have an interest in this topic as she offers some good explanations and links to more. While she expresses some hesitance about the AquAdvantage salmon, it is measured,
While I don’t feel I would be risking my health eating AquAdvantage salmon, I am not sure I would choose it in a supermarket over other farmed salmon. I find genetically engineered triploid salmon fascinating….but not so appetizing. I think a similar gut reaction in consumers is the biggest hurdle for genetically engineered foods. There needs to be a good reason to choose genetically modified foods over the alternatives. If AquAdvantage salmon production can be shown to be better for the environment than other farmed fish people might try it and eventually not be turned off by how it was made.
Getting back to The Nano Bite December 2015, you can find the full issue here.
On Tuesday, October 27, 2015 Café Scientifique, in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), will be hosting a talk on the history of noise (from the Oct. 13, 2015 announcement),
Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Shawn Bullock. The title of his talk is:
The History of Noise: Perspectives from Physics and Engineering
The word “noise” is often synonymous with “nuisance,” which implies something to be avoided as much as possible. We label blaring sirens, the space between stations on the radio dial and the din of a busy street as “noise.” Is noise simply a sound we don’t like? We will consider the evolution of how scientists and engineers have thought about noise, beginning in the 19th-century and continuing to the present day. We will explore the idea of noise both as a social construction and as a technological necessity. We’ll also touch on critical developments in the study of sound, the history of physics and engineering, and the development of communications technology.
This description is almost identical to the description Bullock gave for a November 2014 talk he titled: Snap, Crackle, Pop!: A Short History of Noise which he summarizes this way after delivering the talk,
I used ideas from the history of physics, the history of music, the discipline of sound studies, and the history of electrical engineering to make the point that understanding “noise” is essential to understanding advancements in physics and engineering in the last century. We began with a discussion of 19th-century attitudes toward noise (and its association with “progress” and industry) before moving on to examine the early history of recorded sound and music, early attempts to measure noise, and the noise abatement movement. I concluded with a brief overview of my recent work on the role of noise in the development of the modem during the early Cold War.
You can find out more about Dr. Bullock who is an assistant professor of science education at Simon Fraser University here at his website.
On the subject of noise, although not directly related to Bullock’s work, there’s some research suggesting that noise may be having a serious impact on marine life. From an Oct. 8, 2015 Elsevier press release on EurekAlert,
Quiet areas should be sectioned off in the oceans to give us a better picture of the impact human generated noise is having on marine animals, according to a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin. By assigning zones through which ships cannot travel, researchers will be able to compare the behavior of animals in these quiet zones to those living in noisier areas, helping decide the best way to protect marine life from harmful noise.
The authors of the study, from the University of St Andrews, UK, the Oceans Initiative, Cornell University, USA, and Curtin University, Australia, say focusing on protecting areas that are still quiet will give researchers a better insight into the true impact we are having on the oceans.
Almost all marine organisms, including mammals like whales and dolphins, fish and even invertebrates, use sound to find food, avoid predators, choose mates and navigate. Chronic noise from human activities such as shipping can have a big impact on these animals, since it interferes with their acoustic signaling – increased background noise can mean animals are unable to hear important signals, and they tend to swim away from sources of noise, disrupting their normal behavior.
The number of ships in the oceans has increased fourfold since 1992, increasing marine noise dramatically. Ships are also getting bigger, and therefore noisier: in 2000 the biggest cargo ships could carry 8,000 containers; today’s biggest carry 18,000.
“Marine animals, especially whales, depend on a naturally quiet ocean for survival, but humans are polluting major portions of the ocean with noise,” said Dr. Christopher Clark from the Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell University. “We must make every effort to protect quiet ocean regions now, before they grow too noisy from the din of our activities.”
For the new study, lead author Dr. Rob Williams and the team mapped out areas of high and low noise pollution in the oceans around Canada. Using shipping route and speed data from Environment Canada, the researchers put together a model of noise based on ships’ location, size and speed, calculating the cumulative sound they produce over the course of a year. They used the maps to predict how noisy they thought a particular area ought to be.
To test their predictions, in partnership with Cornell University, they deployed 12 autonomous hydrophones – devices that can measure noise in water – and found a correlation in terms of how the areas ranked from quietest to noisiest. The quiet areas are potential noise conservation zones.
“We tend to focus on problems in conservation biology. This was a fun study to work on, because we looked for opportunities to protect species by working with existing patterns in noise and animal distribution, and found that British Colombia offers many important habitat for whales that are still quiet,” said Dr. Rob Williams, lead author of the study. “If we think of quiet, wild oceans as a natural resource, we are lucky that Canada is blessed with globally rare pockets of acoustic wilderness. It makes sense to talk about protecting acoustic sanctuaries before we lose them.”
Although it is clear that noise has an impact on marine organisms, the exact effect is still not well understood. By changing their acoustic environment, we could be inadvertently choosing winners and losers in terms of survival; researchers are still at an early stage of predicting who will win or lose under different circumstances. The quiet areas the team identified could serve as experimental control sites for research like the International Quiet Ocean Experiment to see what effects ocean noise is having on marine life.
“Sound is perceived differently by different species, and some are more affected by noise than others,” said Christine Erbe, co-author of the study and Director of the Marine Science Center, Curtin University, Australia.
So far, the researchers have focused on marine mammals – whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions. With a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, Dr. Williams now plans to look at the effects of noise on fish, which are less well understood. By starting to quantify that and let people know what the likely economic effect on fisheries or on fish that are culturally important, Dr. Williams hopes to get the attention of the people who make decisions that affect ocean noise.
“When protecting highly mobile and migratory species that are poorly studied, it may make sense to focus on threats rather than the animals themselves. Shipping patterns decided by humans are often more predictable than the movements of whales and dolphins,” said Erin Ashe, co-author of the study and co-founder of the Oceans Initiative from the University of St Andrews.
Keeping areas of the ocean quiet is easier than reducing noise in already busy zones, say the authors of the study. However, if future research that stems from noise protected zones indicates that overall marine noise should be reduced, there are several possible approaches to reducing noise. The first is speed reduction: the faster a ship goes, the noisier it gets, so slowing down would reduce overall noise. The noisiest ships could also be targeted for replacement: by reducing the noise produced by the noisiest 10% of ships in use today, overall marine noise could be reduced by more than half. The third, more long-term, option would be to build quieter ships from the outset.
I can’t help wondering why Canadian scientists aren’t involved in this research taking place off our shores. Regardless, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Quiet(er) marine protected areas by Rob Williams, Christine Erbe, Erin Ashe, & Christopher W. Clark. Marine Pollution Bulletin Available online 16 September 2015 In Press, Corrected Proof doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.09.012
I have some good news on a couple of fronts. First, it seems increasingly likely that we will see a 2015 election science debate.
Canadian election 2015 science debate
The debate will be, according to Jim Handman, senior producer, held in early October 2015 on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio’s Quirks and Quarks program. Here’s what Mr. Handman had to say after I tweeted and contacted them about holding an election science debate,
… Quirks has approached all the parties at the national
level to provide candidates for a radio panel on science to be
broadcast in early October. They have all expressed interest and we are waiting to hear about specific candidates. It is up to the parties to choose the participants.
Not realizing something was in the works at Quirks and Quarks and following on a suggestion from David Bruggeman at Pasco Phronesis (noted in my Aug. 17, 2015 posting), I contacted Lynne Quarmby (Green shadow science minister), Ted Hsu (Liberal shadow science minister), Kennedy Stewart (NDP [New Democratic Party] shadow science minister), and Ed Holder (Conservative science minister) about their willingness to participate in a debate. As of this writing, both Lynne Quarmby and Ted Hsu have shown interest.
While I was busy tweeting, this was brought to my attention,
You can see, if you look carefully at the bottom of the poster, the Evidence for Democracy logo. Those folks kicked off a proposal for science debate for this election in an Aug. 12, 2015 opinion piece for the Toronto Star.
Plus, CBC is reporting a new call for a science debate in a Sept. 3, 2015 news item by Julie Ireton,
Members of Canada’s long-silent scientific research community are increasingly speaking out during this year’s federal campaign as they desperately try to make science an election issue.
…
Jules Blais, a biology professor at the University of Ottawa, calls cuts to science-related jobs “targeted strikes.”
Like many Canadian scientists, Blais considers himself non-partisan and said he’s not campaigning for any particular party, but that he and others are speaking out for the need to protect independent scientific research.
“Science has always been apolitical by its nature, but in recent years because of the dramatic changes that we’re seeing in the way science is being done, and science is being conducted, it’s increasingly a political issue,” said Blais.
…
To sum it up, it all looks quite promising for 2015 although I hope any national debate will be more broad-ranging and nuanced than a simple Conservative science policy bashing.
For anyone interested in ancient history, there’s my Aug. 17, 2015 posting which provides a view of previous efforts to get a science debate during an election in English-speaking Canada and notes like efforts have taken place in French-speaking Canada. Happily for anyone wanting a more complete history, Pascal Lapointe and Josh Silberg have written an Aug. 31, 2015 posting on Science Borealis detailing efforts in Québec.
Canadian Science Policy Conference blogging session
In an Aug. 18, 2015 posting, I highlighted and critiqued the blogging session offered at the upcoming 2015 Canadian Science Policy Conference. One of the blog panel members, Chris Buddle kindly contacted me via Twitter to answer a few of the questions I’d posed and to tell me that he’d contacted the organizers and suggested some changes be made to the descriptions based on my comments. You can find the changed descriptions here.
They’ve added one person to the panel, Lisa Willemse, who’s billed as Senior Communications Advisor, Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
One final comment about the science blogging panel descriptions, I wish they’d added links to the blogs. Perhaps that wasn’t technical feasible?
Protest song
Part of what has mobilized scientists and a discussion of science in Canada has been the Conservative government’s policy of ‘muzzling scientists’. Glyn Moody in a Sept. 1, 2015 posting on Techdirt profiles an incident where Environment Canada scientist, Tony Turner, has been put on leave while charges that he violated conflict-of-interest rules are being investigated. His sin: he wrote a protest song, got a group of friends and supporters to sing it with him, and then posted it to Youtube. From Moody’s posting (Note: A link has been removed),
Turner’s song, with its opening lines “Who controls our parliament? Harperman, Harperman. Who squashes all dissent? Harperman, Harperman,” and a refrain of “It’s time for you to go,” is pretty mild stuff. …
Of course, the great thing about the Canadian government’s absurd overreaction to this gentlest of private protests is that many more people will now learn that Turner is an environmental scientist who is being muzzled by a bunch of desperate control freaks who are frightened that the Canadian people might be told the truth about important scientific issues. Thank goodness for the Streisand Effect…. [As I understand it, Barbra Streisand once responded to criticism or commentary about herself that she found offensive. Her response, given her star power, drew a great of attention to the commentary. Techdirt folks have dubbed this the ‘Streisand’ effect, i.e. drawing attention to something no one would have noticed otherwise.]
An Aug. 28, 2015 article by Madeline Smith for the Globe and Mail provides details about the protest song and government response,
An Environment Canada scientist is under investigation for allegedly breaching the public service code of ethics by writing and performing a political song that criticizes the Harper government.
…
Andrew Hall, who filmed the Harperman video – a singalong with a backup choir that had almost 60,000 views as of Friday [Aug. 28, 2015] evening – said the song is a “joyful” expression of protest. [emphasis mine] He said Mr. Turner wasn’t acting as a public servant, so there should be a reasonable expectation “to be able to engage in democracy.”
As of Thurs., Sept. 3, 2015 at 10 am PDT the number of views is 525,823. So, from June 2015 when it was first posted to Aug. 28, 2015, there were almost 60,000 views. The Streisand effect in operation!
According to Smith’s article, Turner, after working for the government for 20 years, is months from retirement.
Finally, the song,
Rousing, isn’t it? That said, there is a fine line to be tread here. Civil servants are required to be neutral and, assuming you’re not dealing with noxious forces, you need to be respectful of the agreements you’ve made. As a civil servant for a number of years, that freedom of speech vs. neutrality ethics divide always bothered me. I believe that people are entitled to speak their opinions in private but I do see the point of insisting on neutrality professionally and privately. Most times, neutrality is the way to go for civil servants. However, there are times when one must speak out. The question is: what is the tipping point?
I have three frog-oriented items and while they’re not strictly speaking in my usual range of topics, given this blog’s name and the fact I haven’t posted a frog piece in quite a while, it seems this is a good moment to address that lack.
Monitoring frogs and amphibians at Trent University (Ontario, Canada)
From a March 23, 2015 Trent University news release,
With the decline of amphibian populations around the world, a team of researchers led by Trent University’s Dr. Dennis Murray will seek to establish environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring of amphibian occupancy and aquatic ecosystem risk assessment with the help of a significant grant of over $596,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Awarded to Professor Murray, a Canada research chair in integrative wildlife conservation, bioinformatics, and ecological modelling and professor at Trent University along with colleagues Dr. Craig Brunetti of the Biology department, and Dr. Chris Kyle of the Forensic Science program, and partners at Laurentian University, University of Toronto, McGill University, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and Environment Canada, the grant will support the development of tools that will promote a cleaner aquatic environment.
The project will use amphibian DNA found in natural breeding habitats to determine the presence and abundance of amphibians as well as their pathogens. This new technology capitalizes on Trent University’s expertise and infrastructure in the areas of wildlife DNA and water quality.
“We’re honoured to have received the grant to help us drive the project forward,” said Prof. Murray. “Our plan is to place Canada, and Trent, in a leadership position with respect to aquatic wildlife monitoring and amphibian conservation.”
Amphibian populations are declining worldwide, yet in Canada, amphibian numbers are not monitored closely, meaning changes in their distribution or abundance may be unnoticeable. Amphibian monitoring in Canada is conducted by citizen scientists who record frog breeding calls when visiting bodies of water during the spring. However, the lack of formalized amphibian surveys leaves Canada in a vulnerable position regarding the status of its diverse amphibian community.
Prof. Murray believes that the protocols developed from this project could revolutionize how amphibian populations are monitored in Canada and in turn lead to new insights regarding the population trends for several amphibian species across the country.
Here’s more about NSERC and Trent University from the news release,
About NSERC
NSERC is a federal agency that helps make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators. The agency supports almost 30,000 post-secondary students and postdoctoral fellows in their advanced studies. NSERC promotes discovery by funding approximately 12,000 professors every year and fosters innovation by encouraging over 2,400 Canadian companies to participate and invest in post-secondary research projects.
The NSERC Strategic Project Grants aim to increase research and training in areas that could strongly influence Canada’s economy, society or environment in the next 10 years in four target areas: environmental science and technologies; information and communications technologies; manufacturing; and natural resources and energy.
About Trent University
One of Canada’s top universities, Trent University was founded on the ideal of interactive learning that’s personal, purposeful and transformative. Consistently recognized nationally for leadership in teaching, research and student satisfaction, Trent attracts excellent students from across the country and around the world. Here, undergraduate and graduate students connect and collaborate with faculty, staff and their peers through diverse communities that span residential colleges, classrooms, disciplines, hands-on research, co-curricular and community-based activities. Across all disciplines, Trent brings critical, integrative thinking to life every day. As the University celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2014/15, Trent’s unique approach to personal development through supportive, collaborative community engagement is in more demand than ever. Students lead the way by co-creating experiences rooted in dialogue, diverse perspectives and collaboration. In a learning environment that builds life-long passion for inclusion, leadership and social change, Trent’s students, alumni, faculty and staff are engaged global citizens who are catalysts in developing sustainable solutions to complex issues. Trent’s Peterborough campus boasts award-winning architecture in a breathtaking natural setting on the banks of the Otonabee River, just 90 minutes from downtown Toronto, while Trent University Durham delivers a distinct mix of programming in the GTA.
Trent University’s expertise in water quality could be traced to its proximity to Canada’s Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), a much beleaguered research environment due to federal political imperatives. You can read more about the area and the politics in this Wikipedia entry. BTW, I am delighted to learn that it still exists under the auspices of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD),
Taking this post into nanotechnology territory while mentioning the ELA, Trent University published a Dec. 8, 2014 news release about research into silver nanoparticles,
For several years, Trent University’s Dr. Chris Metcalfe and Dr. Maggie Xenopoulos have dedicated countless hours to the study of aquatic contaminants and the threat they pose to our environment.
Now, through the efforts of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), their research is reaching a wider audience thanks to a new video (Note: A link has been removed).
The video is one of a five-part series being released by the IISD that looks into environmental issues in Canada. The video entitled “Distilling Science at the Experimental Lakes Area: Nanosilver” and featuring Professors Metcalfe and Xenopoulos profiles their research around nanomaterials at the Experimental Lakes Area.
Prof. Xenopolous’ involvement in the project falls in line with other environmental issues she has tackled. In the past, her research has examined how human activities – including climate change, eutrophication and land use – affect ecosystem structure and function in lakes and rivers. She has also taken an interest in how land use affects the material exported and processed in aquatic ecosystems.
Prof. Metcalfe’s ongoing research on the fate and distribution of pharmaceutical and personal care products in the environment has generated considerable attention both nationally and internationally.
Together, their research into nanomaterials is getting some attention. Nanomaterials are submicroscopic particles whose physical and chemical properties make them useful for a variety of everyday applications. They can be found in certain pieces of clothing, home appliances, paint, and kitchenware. Initial laboratory research conducted at Trent University showed that nanosilver could strongly affect aquatic organisms at the bottom of the food chain, such as bacteria, algae and zooplankton.
To further examine these effects in a real ecosystem, a team of researchers from Trent University, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada has been conducting studies at undisclosed lakes in northwestern Ontario. The Lake Ecosystem Nanosilver (LENS) project has been monitoring changes in the lakes’ ecosystem that occur after the addition of nanosilver.
“In our particular case, we will be able to study and understand the effects of only nanosilver because that is the only variable that is going to change,” says Prof. Xenopoulos. “It’s really the only place in the world where we can do that.”
The knowledge gained from the study will help policy-makers make decisions about whether nanomaterials can be a threat to aquatic ecosystems and whether regulatory action is required to control their release into the environment.
Caption: This image shows skin texture variation in one individual frog (Pristimantis mutabilis) from Reserva Las Gralarias. Note how skin texture shifts from highly tubercular to almost smooth; also note the relative size of the tubercles on the eyelid, lower lip, dorsum and limbs. Credit: Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
A frog in Ecuador’s western Andean cloud forest changes skin texture in minutes, appearing to mimic the texture it sits on.
Originally discovered by a Case Western Reserve University PhD student and her husband, a projects manager at Cleveland Metroparks’ Natural Resources Division, the amphibian is believed to be the first known to have this shape-shifting capability.
But the new species, called Pristimantis mutabilis, or mutable rainfrog, has company. Colleagues working with the couple recently found that a known relative of the frog shares the same texture-changing quality–but it was never reported before.
The frogs are found at Reserva Las Gralarias, a nature reserve originally created to protect endangered birds in the Parish of Mindo, in north-central Ecuador.
The researchers, Katherine and Tim Krynak, and colleagues from Universidad Indoamérica and Tropical Herping (Ecuador) co-authored a manuscript describing the new animal and skin texture plasticity in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society this week. They believe their findings have broad implications for how species are and have been identified. The process may now require photographs and longer observations in the field to ensure the one species is not mistakenly perceived as two because at least two species of rain frogs can change their appearance.
Katherine Krynak believes the ability to change skin texture to reflect its surroundings may enable P. mutabilis to help camouflage itself from birds and other predators.
The Krynaks originally spotted the small, spiny frog, nearly the width of a marble, sitting on a moss-covered leaf about a yard off the ground on a misty July night in 2009. The Krynaks had never seen this animal before, though Tim had surveyed animals on annual trips to Las Gralarias since 2001, and Katherine since 2005.
They captured the little frog and tucked it into a cup with a lid before resuming their nightly search for wildlife. They nicknamed it “punk rocker” because of the thorn-like spines covering its body.
The next day, Katherine Krynak pulled the frog from the cup and set it on a smooth white sheet of plastic for Tim to photograph. It wasn’t “punk “–it was smooth-skinned. They assumed that, much to her dismay, she must have picked up the wrong frog.
“I then put the frog back in the cup and added some moss,” she said. “The spines came back… we simply couldn’t believe our eyes, our frog changed skin texture!
“I put the frog back on the smooth white background. Its skin became smooth.”
“The spines and coloration help them blend into mossy habitats, making it hard for us to see them,” she said. “But whether the texture really helps them elude predators still needs to be tested.”
During the next three years, a team of fellow biologists studied the frogs. They found the animals shift skin texture in a little more than three minutes.
Juan M. Guayasamin, from Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Ecuador, the manuscript’s first author, performed morphological and genetic analyses showing that P. mutabilis was a unique and undescribed species. Carl R. Hutter, from the University of Kansas, studied the frog’s calls, finding three songs the species uses, which differentiate them from relatives. The fifth author of the paper, Jamie Culebras, assisted with fieldwork and was able to locate a second population of the species. Culebras is a member of Tropical Herping, an organization committed to discovering, and studying reptiles and amphibians.
Guayasamin and Hutter discovered that Prismantis sobetes, a relative with similar markings but about twice the size of P. mutabilis, has the same trait when they placed a spiny specimen on a sheet and watched its skin turn smooth. P. sobetes is the only relative that has been tested so far.
Because the appearance of animals has long been one of the keys to identifying them as a certain species, the researchers believe their find challenges the system, particularly for species identified by one or just a few preserved specimens. With those, there was and is no way to know if the appearance is changeable.
The Krynaks, who helped form Las Gralarias Foundation to support the conservation efforts of the reserve, plan to return to continue surveying for mutable rain frogs and to work with fellow researchers to further document their behaviors, lifecycle and texture shifting, and estimate their population, all in effort to improve our knowledge and subsequent ability to conserve this paradigm shifting species.
Further, they hope to discern whether more relatives have the ability to shift skin texture and if that trait comes from a common ancestor. If P. mutabilis and P. sobetes are the only species within this branch of Pristimantis frogs to have this capability, they hope to learn whether they retained it from an ancestor while relatives did not, or whether the trait evolved independently in each species.
Golden frog of Panama and its skin microbiome
Caption: Researchers studied microbial communities on the skin of Panamanian golden frogs to learn more about amphibian disease resistance. Panamanian golden frogs live only in captivity. Continued studies may help restore them back to the wild. Credit: B. Gratwicke/Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
Among many of the pressures on frog populations, there’s a lethal fungus which has affected some 200 species of frogs. A March 23, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily describes some recent research into the bacterial communities present on frog skin,
A team of scientists including Virginia Tech researchers is one step closer to understanding how bacteria on a frog’s skin affects its likelihood of contracting disease.
A frog-killing fungus known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, has already led to the decline of more than 200 amphibian species including the now extinct-in-the-wild Panamanian golden frog.
In a recent study, the research team attempted to apply beneficial bacteria found on the skin of various Bd-resistant wild Panamanian frog species to Panamanian golden frogs in captivity, to see if this would stimulate a defense against the disease.
They found that while the treatment with beneficial bacteria was not successful due to its inability to stick to the skin, there were some frogs that survived exposure to the fungus.
These survivors actually had unique bacterial communities on their skin before the experiments started.
…
The next step is to explore these new bacterial communities.
“We were disappointed that the treatment didn’t work, but glad to have discovered new information about the relationship between these symbiotic microbial communities and amphibian disease resistance,” said Lisa Belden, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Science, a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, and a faculty member with the new Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. “Every bit of information gets us closer to getting these frogs back into nature.”
Studying the microbial communities of Panamanian golden frogs was the dissertation focus of Belden’s former graduate student Matthew Becker, who graduated with a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Virginia Tech in 2014 and is now a fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
“Anything that can help us predict resistance to this disease is very useful because the ultimate goal of this research is to establish healthy populations of golden frogs in their native habitat,” Becker told Smithsonian Science News. “I think identifying alternative probiotic treatment methods that optimize dosages and exposure times will be key for moving forward with the use of probiotics to mitigate chytridiomycosis.”
Lynn Bergeson’s Jan. 15, 2015 post on the Nanotechnology Now website mentions a newly issued Canadian risk assessment for multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs),
Canada announced on January 9, 2015, that the New Substances Program has published six new risk assessment summaries for chemicals and polymers, including a summary for multi-wall carbon nanotubes.
… Environment Canada and Health Canada conduct risk assessments on new substances. These assessments include consideration of information on physical and chemical properties, hazards, uses, and exposure to determine whether a substance is or may become harmful to human health or environment as set out in Section 64 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA 1999), and, if harm is suspected, to introduce any appropriate or required control measures. …
The substance is a short tangled multi-walled carbon nanotube that can be classified as a nanomaterial. [emphasis mine]
Notified Activities
The substance is proposed to be manufactured in or imported into Canada in quantities greater than 1000 kg/yr for use as an additive in plastics.
Environmental Fate and Behaviour
Based on its physical and chemical properties, if released to the environment, the substance will tend to partition to water, sediment, soil, and ambient air. The substance is expected to be persistent in these compartments because it is a stable inorganic chemical that will not degrade. Based on the limited understanding of uptake by organisms, more data is required to assess the bioaccumulation potential of this substance at the current schedule notification.
Ecological Assessment
Based on the available hazard information on the substance and surrogate data on structurally related nanomaterials, the substance has low to moderate (1-100 mg/L) acute toxicity in aquatic life (fish/daphnia/algae). The predicted no effect concentration was calculated to be less than 1 mg/L using the ErC50 from the most sensitive organism (P. subcapitata), which was used to estimate the environmental risk.
The notified and other potential activities in Canada were assessed to estimate the environmental exposure potential of the substance throughout its life cycle. Environmental exposure from the notified activities was determined through a conservative generic single point-source release blending scenario. The predicted environmental concentration for notified activities is estimated to be 2.1 µg/L.
Based on the current use profile in conjunction with low to moderate ecotoxicity endpoints, the substance is unlikely to cause ecological harm in Canada.
However, based on the current understanding of carbon nanotubes and nanomaterials in general, a change in the use profile of the substance (SNAc No. 17192) may significantly alter the exposure resulting in the substance becoming harmful to the environment. Consequently, more information is necessary to better characterize potential environmental risks.
Human Health Assessment
Based on the available hazard information on the substance, the substance has a low potential for acute toxicity by the oral, dermal and inhalation routes of exposure (oral and dermal LD50 greater than 2000 mg/kg bw; inhalation LC50 greater than 1.3 mg/m3). It is a severe eye irritant (MAS score = 68), a mild skin irritant (PII = 1.08) and at most a weak sensitizer (because the positive control was tested at a concentration 10X higher than the test substance). It is not an in vitro mutagen (negative in a mammalian cell gene mutation test and in a mammalian chromosome aberration test). Therefore the substance is unlikely to cause genetic damage.
Hazards related to substances used in the workplace should be classified accordingly under the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS).
However, based on the available information on structurally related nanomaterials, the substance may cause respiratory toxicity, immunotoxicity, cardiovascular toxicity and carcinogenicity following oral and inhalation exposure.
When used as an additive in plastics, the substance is expected to be manufactured in or imported into Canada encapsulated in a solid polymer matrix. The potential site of exposure to the substance is expected to be within industrial facilities. Therefore, direct exposure of the general population is expected to be low. No significant environmental release is anticipated due to the specialized use under this notification and therefore indirect exposure of the general population from environmental media is also expected to be low. However, if the substance is produced in different forms (e.g. liquid polymer form), applied in different formulations or used in any other potential applications, an increased direct or indirect exposure potential may exist.
Based on the low potential for direct and indirect exposure of the general population under the industrial uses identified in this submission, the substance is not likely to pose a significant health risk to the general population, and is therefore unlikely to be harmful to human health.
However, based on the current understanding of carbon nanotubes and of nanomaterials in general, the risk arising from the use of the substance in consumer products is not known at this time. The use of the substance in consumer products or in products intended for use by or for children may significantly alter the exposure of the general population resulting in the substance becoming harmful to human health. Similarly, the import or manufacture of the substance in quantities greater than 10 000 kg/yr may significantly increase the exposure levels of the general population resulting in the substance becoming harmful to human health. Consequently, more information is necessary to better characterize potential health risks.
I would like to see a definition for the word short as applied, in this risk assessment, to multi-walled carbon nanotubes. That said, this assessment is pretty much in line with current thinking about short, multi-walled carbon nanotubes. In short (wordplay noted), these carbon nanotubes are relatively safe (although some toxicological issues have been noted) as far as can be determined. However, the ‘relatively safe’ assessment may change as more of these carbon nanotubes enter the environment and as people are introduced to more products containing them.
One last comment, I find it surprising I can’t find any mention in the risk assessment of emergency situations such as fire, earthquake, explosions, etc. which could conceivably release short multi-walled carbon nanotubes into the air exposing emergency workers and people caught in a disaster. As well, those airborne materials might subsequently be found in greater quantity in the soil and water.
![AquaBounty's salmon (background) has been genetically modified to grow bigger and faster than a conventional Atlantic salmon of the same age (foreground.) Courtesy of AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. [downloaded from http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/24/413755699/genetically-modified-salmon-coming-to-a-river-near-you]](http://www.frogheart.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/GeneticallyModifiedSalmon.jpg)
