USA lagging Europe in nanotechnology risk research

How much resource is being devoted to assessing the potential risks of the nanotechnologies that are currently at or close to market? Not nearly enough, say campaigning groups, while governments, on the other hand, release impressive sounding figures for their research spend. Most recently, the USA’s National Nanotechnology Initiative has estimated its 2006 spend on nano-safety research as $68 million, which sounds very impressive. However, according to Andrew Maynard, a leading nano-risk researcher based at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, we shouldn’t take this figure at face value.

Maynard comments on the figure on the SafeNano blog, referring to an analysis recently done by him and described in a news release from the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. It seems that this figure is obtained by adding up all sorts of basic nanotechnology research, some of which might have only tangential relevance to problems of risk. If one applies a tighter definition of research that is either highly relevant to nanotechnology risk – such as a direct toxicology study – or substantially relevant -such as a study of the fate in the body of medical nanoparticles – it seems that the numbers fall substantially. Only $13 million of the $68 million was highly relevant to nanotechnology risk, with this number increasing to $29 million if the substantially relevant category is included too. This compares unfavourably with European spending, which amounts to $24 million in the highly relevant category alone.

Of course, it isn’t the headline figure that matters; what’s important is whether the research is relevant to the actual and potential risks that are out there. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has done a great service by compiling an international inventory of nanotechnology risk research which allows one to see clearly just what sort of risk research is being funded across the world. It’s clear from this that suggestions that nanotechnology is being commercialised with no risk research at all being done are wide of the mark; what requires further analysis is whether all the right research is being done.