US chems warn regs failure inhibits nanotech

31 October 2007 20:51  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--Chemical industry and academic leaders warned Congress on Wednesday that federal government failure to coordinate environmental research on nanomaterials development may delay promising scientific advances.

 

Officials from the chemicals business sector and chemistry research told the House Committee on Science and Technology that a multi-agency federal group, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), is not moving quickly to set a comprehensive strategy for worker safety, human health and environmental research in the broad nanotech field.

 

The NNI is made up of representatives of 26 different federal agencies and is supposed to coordinate research and oversight by those various government offices in nanoscale science, engineering and technology.

 

However, Vicki Colvin, a chemical engineering professor and executive director of the International Council on Nanotechnology, told the committee that “innovation in nanotechnology is being threatened by the uncertainty about its risks and how government will manage them”.

 

Colvin, who teaches at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and also directs the centre for environmental nanotechnology there, said delays in federal policymaking on how to regulate and control nanotech research and development (R&D) and commercialization puts at risk potential breakthroughs in a wide range of sciences.

 

“Nanotechnologies offer new approaches to treating cancer and cleaning water and may enable energy independence for our country,” Colvin said.  “But fewer of these transformative technologies will make it into commerce if the technology transfer pipeline becomes clogged by concerns about nanoproduct safety.”

 

Paul Ziegler, chairman of the nanotechnology panel at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), said that federal government support for a comprehensive environmental, health and safety (EHS) research agenda “is essential to the sustained and responsible development of nanotechnology”.

 

Representative Brian Baird (Democrat-Washington), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education, said that NNI’s “EHS research component has not been well planned and executed”.

 

Baird noted that an NNI memo on nanotech environmental research priorities is more than a year past due.  “This is simply not an acceptable situation,” he said.

 

“I am genuinely puzzled why more progress has not been made to develop this research strategy and plan that everyone believes is necessary for the successful development of nanotechnology,” Baird added.  He asked for suggestions on how to accelerate the process.

 

Speaking for the ACC and 17 US and foreign chemical firms on the trade group’s nanotech panel, Ziegler suggested that the task of drawing up nanotech environmental research priorities and planning be transferred from the multi-agency NNI to a single entity, the National Academy of Sciences’ board of environmental studies and toxicology (BEST).

 

The House committee is to complete legislation to reauthorize NNI by year end, and Baird indicated that bill likely will include measures to advance federal guidelines on nanotech environmental issues.

By: Joe Kamalick
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