Tag Archives: United Nations Institute for Training and Research

WHO’s nanotechnology regulations

The World Health Organization (WHO) is soliciting comments and support for a set of occupational safety guidelines for the manufacture of nanomaterials. From the Feb. 21, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

To address occupational risks of nanomaterials, WHO is developing Guidelines on “Protecting Workers from Potential Risks of Manufactured Nanomaterials” (WHO/NANOH). These Guidelines aim to facilitate improvements in occupational health and safety of workers potentially exposed to nanomaterials in a broad range of manufacturing and social environments. The guidelines will incorporate elements of risk assessment and risk management and contextual issues. They will provide recommendations to improve occupational safety and protect the health of workers using nanomaterials in all countries and especially in low and middle-income countries.

As an initial step towards the development of the WHO/NANOH Guidelines, WHO prepared a draft background document proposing content and focus of the Guidelines. This background document will be used by the Guideline Development Group to identify key questions to be addressed by the Guidelines.

The public is being invited to send in comments about the guidelines by March 31, 2012. The guidelines along with more instructions can be found on this WHO webpage. The page also includes information about the process for developing the guidelines and a plea for support,

1. Establish a Guideline Development Group and an External Review Group, which reflect the diversity of manufactured nanomaterials and manufacturing processes on the global scale and the cultural differences in workplace safety. The Guideline Development Group oversees important elements in the guideline development process such as drafting guideline text, while the External Review Group is tasked with critical review of the scientific evidence and of the text of the guidelines.

2. Prepare a background document proposing content and focus of the Guidelines. This background document is used by the Guideline Development Group to identify key questions to be addressed by the Guidelines.

3. Prepare systematic review papers for each key question.

4. Prepare guideline recommendations.

5. Conduct an implementation phase of the project encompassing preparation of a user-friendly implementation guide and pilot implementation projects in selected countries.

WHO is in the process of identifying scientific knowledge and expertise on nanomaterials and health to contribute to this initiative. We invite the submission of relevant scientific publications and references in addition to those already mentioned in the background document, as well as expressions of interest to support this project, which can be sent to nanohealth@who.int.

WHO is also seeking additional support for this important project. We welcome expressions of interest to support this project, which also can be sent to nanohealth@who.int.

I’m perplexed by these requests for support.  Do they want researchers to lend their expertise to this project; do they want money; do they want various governments to express their enthusiasm for this project, or all of the above?

I’m happy to see that they do reference the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Publications in the Series on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials; UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research)  Nanotechnology and Manufactured Nanomaterials (this is new to me); and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Nanotechnologies (also new to me).

 

Three citizen cyberscience projects, LHC@home 2.0, computing for clean water, and collaborating with UNOSAT for crisis response

I sometimes lose track of how many years there are such as International Year of Chemistry, Year of Science in BC, etc. but here’s one that’s new to me, the European Year of Volunteering.

CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research [I imagine the French version was Centre européen de la recherche scientifique] and the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics) just announced as part of its support for volunteering, a new version of their volunteer computing project, LHC@home, 2.0, From the August 8, 2011 news item on Science Daily,

This version allows volunteers to participate for the first time in simulating high-energy collisions of protons in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Thus, volunteers can now actively help physicists in the search for new fundamental particles that will provide insights into the origin of our Universe, by contributing spare computing power from their personal computers and laptops.

This means that volunteers at home can participate in the search for the Higgs boson particle, sometimes known as the ‘god’ particle or the ‘champagne bottle’ boson. (Despite rumours earlier this year, the Higgs boson has not yet materialized as Jon Butterworth mentions in his May 11, 2011 post on the Guardian Science blogs. Note: Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London and a member of the High Energy Physics group on the Atlas experiment at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider.)

This latest iteration of the LHC@home project is just one of a series of projects and events being developed by the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (which itself is supported by CERN, by UNITAR [United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and by the University of Geneva) for the European Year of Volunteering.

Two other projects just announced by the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (from the Science Daily news item),

Other projects the Citizen Cyberscience Centre has initiated focus on promoting volunteer science in the developing world, for humanitarian purposes. For example, in collaboration with IBM’s philanthropic World Community Grid and Tsinghua University in Beijing, the Citizen Cyberscience Centre launched the Computing for Clean Water project. The project uses the supercomputer-like strength of World Community Grid to enable scientists to design efficient low-cost water filters for clean water.

In a separate project supported by HP, volunteers can help UNOSAT, the Operational Satellite Applications Programme of UNITAR, to improve damage assessment in developing regions affected by natural or human-made disasters, for humanitarian purposes.

More information about these projects is available in the August 8, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

As Sergio Bertolucci, Director of Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, emphasizes: “While LHC@home is a great opportunity to encourage more public involvement in science, the biggest benefits of citizen cyberscience are for researchers in developing regions who have limited resources for computing and manpower. Online volunteers can boost available research resources enormously at very low cost. This is a trend we are committed to promote through the Citizen Cyberscience Center”.

Leading international computer manufacturers such as IBM and HP have contributed their support and expertise to Citizen Cyberscience Center projects including UNOSAT [UNITAR’s Operational Satellite Applications Prorgramme]. Using data from space agencies and satellite operators around the world, UNOSAT can produce maps for humanitarian applications such as damage assessment or monitoring deforestation. The project relies on ‘volunteer thinking’ where participants actively analyse imagery and their results are compared.

“From a development and humanitarian perspective, the potential of citizen-powered research is enormous”, says Francesco Pisano, Manager of UNOSAT, ” Participating in the Citizen Cyberscience Center enables us to get new insights into the cutting edge of crowdsourcing technologies. There is no doubt that volunteers are playing an increasingly central role in dealing with crisis response, thanks to the Internet.”

Well, the current London riots are revealing other less salubrious uses of social media and the internet but I like to think that in the end, creative uses will prove more enticing than destructive uses.

ETA August 10, 2011: I found one more year, 2011 is the International Year of Forests.

Nanotechnology strategies everywhere except Canada; Visible Verse 2009; OECD workshops on nanotech in developing world

There’s an article by Michael Berger on Nanowerk titled, European strategy for nanotechnology and the nanotechnology Action Plan, where he outlines the European Union’s approach to creating a strategy, contrasts it in a few asides (launching potshots at the Europeans) with the US approach, and provides some handy links. Coincidentally there’s a news item on Nanowerk about RUSNANO (the Russian publicly funded nanotech investment agency) visiting Sweden. From the news item,

A RUSNANO delegation headed by CEO Anatoly Chubais will visit Sweden on November 19-20, 2009 to study the support that government offers for innovative developments, share with Sweden’s business and scientific communities the goals and principles that guide RUSNANO’s activities and discuss opportunities to collaborate in commercialization of nanotechnologies with their Swedish counterparts.

Canada hosted RUSNANO a few months back for similar purposes but interestingly there was no mention of studying “the support that government offers for innovative developments … ” and I’m not sure if it’s because there isn’t a support framework, official or otherwise, in Canada or if they failed to mention it in the news release. (I strongly suspect the former.) I blogged here about RUSNANO’s visit to Canada at the time.

Taking Sweden and the UK as examples, it would seem that European countries have both a European Union framework and an individual country framework for nanotechnology. The US has its National Nanotechnology Initiative (in place since 2000). China will provide some sort of insight into its nanotechnology plans via its road map series which I mentioned briefly here. Canada remains mute. You can view the National Institute of Nanotechnology’s website but you’d be hard pressed to find any details about an overall strategy for nanotechnology scientific research, public engagement, business support, education, social impact  etc. (Despite the institute’s name that’s probably not in their scope of responsibilities but I can’t find that information anywhere.) You will find a list of the institute’s research areas but you won’t find an overview of the Canadian nanotech research scene or much of anything else (to date they have distributed three news releases in 2009 and none in 2008 but 2007 was a banner year, there were four).

For a brief respite from the nano, Heather Haley’s See the Voice: Visible Verse 2009 (video poetry festival) is being held tonight (Thursday, November 19, 2009) at Pacific Cinematheque at 7:30 pm, 1131 Howe St. Vancouver, Canada. You can buy tickets or read more about it here.

Back to the international nanotechnology front: The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) are holding joint nanotechnology awareness workshops for transitional and developing countries. You can read more about them in the news item on Nanowerk.

Edited at 3:05 pm PST, Nov. 19.09 to change electronic poetry to video poetry.