This piece was originally published by the Responsible Nano Forum as a foreword to reflections on the 5th anniversary of the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering report “Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties.”
Summary of the 2004 RS/RAE report
On July 29th 2004, the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering published “Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties.” It was a milestone moment for the emerging field of nanotechnology. Authored by a panel representing a wide range of expertise and perspectives, the document highlighted the promise of nanoscale-based technologies, delved into the potential hurdles to safe and sustainable development, and eschewing “singular” wisdom, introduced the world to the term “nanotechnologies.”
It also set out a clear path toward realizing the great potential of a significant emerging technology, while avoiding harm.
Five years on, how are we doing?
Back in 2004, I was co-chair of the U.S. government working group addressing the potential implications of nanotechnology and leading nanotech health and safety-related research at NIOSH – the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health… I had previously provided comments to the RS/RAE panel, and was looking forward to the final report with anticipation. I even cut a trip to Singapore short to be present at the report’s U.S. launch, which was hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center—foreshadowing my move to the organization some months later.
At the time, concerns were mounting over possible new risks associated with creating materials and devices at the nanoscale, and how these would affect the technology’s development. The previous year, Michael Crichton’s book Prey had sent the nanotech community into a tizzy over a speculative public backlash against the emerging science and technology. And researchers were beginning to reveal hints that novel nanoscale materials could also affect humans and the environment in unconventional ways—getting to places and causing harm on a scale that belied their small size.
Into this growing tension and hype between the great promise and potential for harm that emerging nanotechnologies seemed to represent, the RS/RAE report came as a clear voice of reason. The document was authoritative, clear, grounded in science, yet responsive to the broader social, economic and political environment within which nanotechnology was emerging. It also placed a clear emphasis on the need to engage publics, address safety concerns and regulate emerging technologies successfully if the potential benefits from nanoscale science, engineering and technology were to be fully realized.
The RS/RAE report wasn’t the first to tackle these issues. But it was the first to provide a clear and overarching perspective on what the opportunities and challenges were, and how to grasp the former while overcoming the latter. In doing so, it helped to focus the thinking of the time, and illuminated a path forward toward the responsible and effective development of nanotechnology.
If the report had not been written, I cannot imagine we would have seen as much activity as we have over the past five years on developing safe, acceptable and successful nanotechnologies. Since its publication in 2004, research, publications and discussions on the potential impacts of nanotechnologies have increased dramatically. Various European committees have reviewed the state of the science and recommended actions to underpin safe use and effective regulation. New pan-European research programs have been funded to tackle specific health, safety and societal issues. In the U.S. the National Nanotechnology Initiative has consolidated federal approaches to addressing environmental health and safety concerns, and research into human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnologies has increased. National and international initiatives have brought stakeholders together to explore the development of responsible nanotechnologies. Standards organizations have been galvanized into writing whole rafts of nanotech reports, guidelines and technical standards. Awareness has grown over the need to engage the developers and users of nanotechnology-enabled products on the development of emerging technologies. And moves have been made toward tighter regulation of new nanomaterials in Europe and the U.S.
And, most importantly, no one to our knowledge has been harmed from being exposed to new engineered nanomaterials.
Yet despite all this activity, it’s harder to pin down how much concrete progress has been made. If the RS/RAE report was published in its current form today, it’s assessment and recommendations would be as relevant as they were five years ago. A few things have changed over the past five years—the original report didn’t predict the widespread use of nanoscale silver in consumer products for instance, and it shied away from describing increasingly complex developments in nanoscience that are now beginning to translate into viable technologies.
But many of the top-line recommendations in the 2004 report would not be out of place in a 2009 assessment of nanotechnology opportunities and challenges.
Some of the recommendations made by the RS/RAE tackled issues that would never be resolved overnight. In these cases, it’s not surprising that more still needs to be done. For instance, life cycle assessments, workplace exposure, developing appropriate measurement methods and engaging the public on emerging technologies, are all areas that will most likely remain important for decades.
In other areas, it’s harder to understand why progress has dragged so. The U.K. is still lacking a dedicated interdisciplinary center for nanomaterial risk research for example, leaving industry and government decision-makers without a strategically important resource for filling key knowledge gaps. And research into the potential impacts of carbon nanotubes—highlighted as a critically important issue in the report—has been hampered by a disregard for the RS/RAE recommendations by research funders.
In some cases, actions have been taken that fly in the face of the RS/RAE recommendations. A recent paper in Environmental Health Perspectives highlighted 45 sites around the world where unbound nanoparticles are being released into the environment for groundwater and soil remediation (a map of the locations is available at http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/remediation_map/)—in spite the RS/RAE panel recommending that until more is known about their environmental impact, “the use of free nanoparticles in environmental applications such as remediation of groundwater be prohibited.”
But reading through the original report, what strikes me more than anything is how the clarity that the RS/RAE brought to thinking about the responsible development of emerging technologies has been lost.
Over the past five years there have been endless discussions, workshops, reviews and reports on the responsible development of nanotechnology. In many cases, they demonstrate a disturbingly pre-2004 understanding of the issues. It’s as if the RS/RAE report is viewed as a landmark, but not a beacon—everyone knows about it, but no one takes the time to read (or re-read) it.
A few weeks ago, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in the U.K. – BIS – launched a public consultation to inform the Government’s strategy for nanotechnology. It’s a good idea, and should help the U.K. develop a clear roadmap for developing responsible and successful nanotechnologies. But it’s ironic that five years after the RS/RAE provided the government with clear advice on what was needed to develop safe nanotechnologies, the occasion is being marked by yet another review.
It’s moves like this that make me wonder whether, despite all the action following publication of the RS/RAE report, there hasn’t been that much progress.
But there is a more serious issue here. Engineered nanomaterials—which were the primary focus of the RS/RAE report—represent one technology innovation out of many that are likely to emerge over the coming decades. Scientific knowledge, and the technologies it spawns, are increasing at a geometric rate. The opportunities and challenges these emerging technologies will present are likely to bear scant resemblance to those experienced in the twentieth century—we are already seeing this in areas like nanotechnology, synthetic biology and information technology. Yet we seem stuck in a rut, attempting to manage 21st century technologies with a 20th century mindset.
The RS/RAE report pointed the way towards changing this mindset and grappling with new challenges in new ways—ways that brought people together in partnerships to proactively grasp new opportunities while preempting and managing emerging risks. It provided a template for how to develop emerging technologies responsibly.
Nanotechnologies have had a fairly easy ride so far. Public awareness remains low. Progress has been incremental and often below the radar. And no one has died—yet. We may not be so lucky with the next new technology to come along. Unless we learn from and build on the broader lessons of the 2004 Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering report, we could find ourselves facing opportunities and challenges we are ill-equipped to deal with.
The full retrospective on 5 years after the Royal Society/Royal Acvademies of Engineering Nanotechnologies Report can be found here.