Nanotech risk research needs strategy, money

Physicist Andrew Maynard sat at the head table in a packed conference room at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and unscrewed the lid from a jar of calcium powder containing nanoparticles. A puff of the powder rose into the air as he lifted the lid.

“Is it safe to breathe this in?” he asked the audience. He held up a jar of face cream containing carbon-60, or buckyballs. “You put this on your face. Is it safe, or not? I don’t know.”

Nobody else knows either, Maynard said, and that is the reason he is calling on the federal government to develop a research strategy to determine the health and safety risks of the emerging field of nanotechnology. In his new Wilson Center report, Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk, Maynard recommends that $100 million be spent over the next two years on nanotechnology risk research.

Calculating how much is now being spent to determine the potential dangers of nanotechnology is difficult because the funding is spread across several agencies, he said, but he believes the annual amount is about $11 million. Maynard, the chief science adviser to the Wilson Center, said it is critical to develop an overarching strategy to assess the safety of the myriad forms of nanoparticles before widespread health problems develop, not after.

To give an idea of the scope and immediacy of the problem, Maynard points to a recent study by Lux Research, an investment advisory company. That study says more than $32 billion worth of products using nanotechnology were sold worldwide in 2005. Government and private US investments in nanotechnology R&D have already reached $3 billion, and NSF, a major sponsor of nanotech research, predicts that the global market for products and services using nanotechnologies will reach $1 trillion by 2015.

“The fundamental issue is, we have risks we haven’t seen before,” said Maynard, an aerosols researcher who formerly worked on nanotechnology safety issues for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). “Nanoparticles do behave differently in the environment and in the body than other things we’ve faced in the past.”

“Are there risks from nanomaterials? In some cases, yes, in some cases, no,” said Jeremiah Duncan, an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow working in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s office of pollution prevention and toxics. “But for the most part, we don’t know because the bulk of the research has not been done.” When assessing the health risks of nanoparticles, size matters because the particles are small enough to cross biological boundaries, such as the blood–brain barrier and the placenta, that other particles cannot, he said.

Maynard’s first recommendation in the report is a call for “top-down authoritative oversight of strategic risk-based research within the federal government.” He also calls for shifting nanotechnology risk research to “federal agencies with a clear mandate for oversight and for research into environment, health, and safety issues.”

While most federal nanotechnology funds go to NSF and the Department of Energy, Maynard said the EPA, the National Institutes of Health, and NIOSH should be doing the risk research.

The report also calls for “adequate funding” directed specifically at risk research, which Maynard puts at about $50 million a year. “If we’re going to see business succeed with nanotechnology, we’ve got to see the safety issues dealt with up front,” he said.

Clayton Teague, director of the government’s National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, said the government’s investment in risk research in 2005 was $35 million and he projects spending of $38 million in 2006. “We’ve been funding risk research since the inception of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2001. Since that time it has grown steadily.” Maynard acknowledges the $38 million figure in his report, but claims the number is vague and “no detailed information was released on the research being supported by this funding.” Regardless, Maynard said, it is not enough. Teague said the NNI is completing a risk-related “research needs” document that will look in detail at all the risk research being done throughout the government, and recommend what new work needs to be done.

Business groups are pushing for more federal risk research to lessen their liability and reduce the likelihood of a public backlash against nanotechnology if there is a problem with a product in the marketplace. Paolo Gargini, director of technology strategy for Intel Corp, said Maynard’s report was “an important contribution to building much needed consensus around the need for focused research into the implications … of nanotechnology.” Intel, he said, believes there is a need for more federal research “devoted to studying the environmental, health, and safety dimensions of nanotechnology.”

The report calls for a short-term research plan to look at products already in the market—everything from the calcium powder to cosmetics to neck-support pillows filled with silver nanoparticles. Maynard also calls for international coordination of risk research, establishing a joint government–industry research institute, and creating an interagency oversight group with the authority to coordinate and direct the risk research program.

Given the budget constraints plaguing the entire federal government, Duncan and other environmental safety experts doubt there will be new money for nanotechnology risk research. And Teague said creating “one über agency” to regulate research throughout the government would be difficult to implement. “But [Maynard’s] report is a thoughtful analysis of what’s being done and where things are going,” he said. “There needs to be a solid strategy for moving forward.”