Expert Views on Regulatory Preparedness for Managing the Risks of Nanotechnologies

The potential and promise of nanotechnologies depends in large part on the ability for regulatory systems to assess and manage their benefits and risks. However, considerable uncertainty persists regarding the health and environmental implications of nanomaterials, hence the capacity for existing regulations to meet this challenge has been widely questioned. Here we draw from a survey (N=254) of US-based nano-scientists and engineers, environmental health and safety scientists, and regulatory scientists and decision-makers, to ask whether nano experts regard regulatory agencies as prepared for managing nanomaterial risks. We find that all three expert groups view regulatory agencies as unprepared. The effect is strongest for regulators themselves, and less so for scientists conducting basic, applied, or health and safety work on nanomaterials. Those who see nanotechnology risks as novel, uncertain, and difficult to assess are particularly likely to see agencies as unprepared. Trust in regulatory agencies, views of stakeholder responsibility regarding the management of risks, and socio-political values were also found to be small but significant drivers of perceived agency preparedness. These results underscore the need for new tools and methods to enable the assessment of nanomaterial risks, and to renew confidence in regulatory agencies’ ability to oversee their growing use and application in society

Exploring the development of a decision support system (DSS) to prioritize engineered nanoparticles for risk assessment

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Evaluating nanotechnology opportunities and risks through integration of life-cycle and risk assessment

It has been some 15 years since the topics of sustainability and nanotechnologies first appeared together in the scientific literature and became a focus of organizations' research and policy developments. On the one hand, this focus is directed towards approaches and tools for risk assessment and management and on the other hand towards life-cycle thinking and assessment. Comparable to their application for regular chemicals, each tool is seen to serve separate objectives as it relates to evaluating nanotechnologies' safety or resource efficiency, respectively. While nanomaterials may provide resource efficient production and consumption, this must balance any potential hazards they pose across their life-cycles. This Perspective advocates for integrating these two tools at the methodological level for achieving this objective, and it explains what advantages and challenges this offers decision-makers while highlighting what research is needed to further enhance integration.Initiative d'excellence de l'Université de Bordeau

Nanotechnology and Risk Governance in the European Union: the Constitution of Safety in Highly Promoted and Contested Innovation Areas

[EN]The European Union (EU) is strategically committed to the development of nanotechnology and its industrial exploitation. However, nanotechnology also has the potential to disrupt human health and the environment. The EU claims to be committed to the safe and responsible development of nanotechnology. In this sense, the EU has become the first governing body in the world to develop nanospecific regulations, largely due to legislative action taken by the European Parliament, which has compensated for the European Commission’s reluctance to develop special regulations for nanomaterials. Nevertheless, divergences aside, political bodies in the EU assume that nanotechnology development is controllable and take for granted that both the massive industrial use of nanomaterials and a high level of environmental and health protection are compatible. However, experiences such as the European controversy over agri-food biotechnology, which somewhat delegitimized the regulatory authority of the EU over technological safety and acceptability, arguably show that controllability assumptions are contestable on the grounds of alternative socio-economic and cultural preferences and values. Recently developed inclusive governance models on safety and innovation, such as"Responsible Research and Innovation" (RRI), widelyclaim that a diversity of considerations and issues areintegrated into R&D processes. Even so, the possibility of more radically alternative constitutions of sociotechnical safety seems to be seriously limited by the current ideology of innovation and economic imperatives of the global, knowledge-based, capitalist economy.This work is based mainly upon research supported by the Basque Government’s Department of Education, Universities and Research under a Postdoctoral Fellowship for the Improvement of Research Personnel in a Foreign Country (grant BFI08.183). It has also been supported by the Basque Government’s Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture (grant IT644-13), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (grant FFI2015-69792-R), and the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (grant EHUA15/13). The author also wishes to thank Heather A. Okvat for her assistance in revising the initial, original version of the article, and to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and thorough comments on the present version. Any shortcomings in the work remain the responsibility of the author