A few weeks ago, the US National Nanotechnology Initiative website – www.nano.gov – underwent a much-needed facelift.  The NNI’s web portal was creaky when I was part of the Initiative several years ago now.  And it’s somewhat ironic that the world’s leading interagency initiative on one of the most prominent cutting edge technology platforms has relied on a website that is the antithesis of technology innovation for over a decade.  So I was pleasantly surprise to see the other week that the site has been updated, streamlined, and made more accessible, attractive, and – dare I say – useful.

The update has been in the works for a while now – I was one of a number of people asked about the old site and what improvements could be made well over 12 months ago.  Fortunately, despite the slow pace of progress, it looks like the changes have been worth waiting for.

Glancing around the new and improved site, the designers and NNI have done a good job.  Useful information on nanotechnology and the initiative is now far easier to find.  Information on stuff like current funding opportunities and recent reports is now clearly accessible from the home page.  It’s a cinch to find out more information about the Initiative and its member agencies.  Heck, you can even follow the NNI on Twitter now!

I particularly appreciate the new search page for NNI publications and resources.  If you are looking for specific resources from 2008 onwards, it’s easy to pull them out using the search interface.  The downside is that if you want anything before 2008, things are a little trickier – the search date fields don’t allow you to easily enter dates before January 1 2008 (although bizarrely you can search for stuff published between 2012 – 2014 – maybe time travel is a little-touted side-project of the NNI!).  Fortunately, you can enter earlier dates manually though – although you can’t see what you are typing.  Using this workaround, I managed to pull up some of the pre-2000 NNI documents, although I did notice that some of the early Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology documents (the precursor of the NNI) were missing.

I’m not sure how much substantive new content has been added to the site with the update – although clearly there is some.  But at least in style and accessibility, the NNI now have a web portal that is commensurate with the technology it promotes.

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For nano-geeks, this is what the NNI website looked like on November 12 2010:

(You can access the archive by clicking on the image, but it will take a while to load).

And this is what it looked like on April 7 2000 (the earliest archived copy I could find):

Admittedly, the 2010 version was rather slicker that the 2000 version.  The basic design that has just been superseded dates back to 2004.

A guest blog by David H. Guston, Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University.

The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) has recently put the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) through its biennial paces.  Launched in 2000 by President Clinton, authorized in 2003 by the 21^st Century Nanotechnology R&D Act, and reviewed in 2005 and 2008 by PCAST (yes, an odd vision of “biennial”), the NNI is now a decade old.  For better and for ill, it is starting to show its age.

First, full disclosure.  I direct a Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NNI to investigate the societal aspects of nanotechnologies.  So my Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) gets a bit more than $1M per year from NNI.  Second, as can be seen in the recent PCAST review document [PDF, 4.8 MB], I also testified before the working group that produced the report.  Third, one of the PCAST members is my college roommate’s mother (but that’s *not* why I was called to testify!).

Whew!

Since the early days of NNI, as well as since the 2003 Act, public engagement with nanotechnology was supposed to be on the agenda.  The early reports by NSF on the societal aspects of nanotechnology refer to the productive role that public engagement can play, and the relevant passage from the 2003 Act 2(B)(10)(d) authorizes:

“public input and outreach to be integrated into the Program by the convening of regular and ongoing public discussions, through mechanisms such as citizens’ panels, consensus conferences, and educational events, as appropriate.”

Bluntly, however, public engagement has not been implemented as robustly as it might have been.

In May 2006, the NNI offered a promising if tardy start with a large workshop on public participation, organized by the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office (NNCO) and sponsored by the Nano-scale Science, Engineering and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee.  The two-day program generated considerable excitement among the larger-than-expected number of attendees.  Yet, while the presentations from the workshop are available on line, no report on the workshop seems to have ever been finalized for distribution on the NNI website.

The major messages of that meeting, as well as almost all relevant scholarship in public engagement in science and technology over the last decade and a half, are that:

• Communication between the lay-public (which is not monolithic) and the scientific community (which isn’t, either) needs to be two-way.
• Such communication needs to be not just about scientific facts but also about technological applications and social values.
• And the purpose of this communication must not be limited to the faulty formula of “more knowledge on the part of the public will mean more support for research and technological applications.”

Nevertheless, the nanotechnocracy has generally cast public engagement in terms entirely instrumental for the success of, well, nanotechnology.

The first PCAST (2005:38) report [PDF, 4 MB], e.g. argued directly that:

“[t]o sustain this [high level of public] support, the scientific community and the Federal agencies that fund scientific research must communicate more directly with the public, not through surrogates such as the entertainment industry…. Through the NNI website and through outreach activities at the NSF-funded centers and DOE user facilities, the NNI has established channels to communicate with members of various stakeholder groups, including the broader public.”

Similarly, recommendation 6.1 of PCAST (2008:34-35) [PDF, 1.3 MB] was to:

“[d]emonstrate more clearly to the public the value of nanotechnology and NNI-supported research and development.”

The first report (PCAST 2005:38) even attempted a pre-emptive defense of its practices, reporting that its working group “has held open meetings focusing on nanotechnology issues, which have provided the public with several opportunities to provide input.”  But the ability of the general public – as opposed to organized and special interests – to participate substantively in “open meetings” of executive agency committees is highly constrained, which is likely why the passage in the 2003 Act cited above calls for open, interactive public forums like citizens’ panels and consensus conferences.

Taking guidance from this specific language, CNS-ASU has made public engagement a centerpiece of its activities.  In Spring 2008, CNS-ASU organized the most ambitious public engagement activity around nanotechnology in the US, the National Citizens’ Technology Forum (NCTF).  Modeled after the Danish consensus conference but distributed across six locales across the United States, the NCTF on “nanotechnologies and human enhancement” demonstrated that a high-quality deliberative activity can be organized at a national scale in the US, and that a representative selection of lay-citizens can come to discerning judgments about nanotechnologies while they are still emergent (Hamlett et al. 2008, PDF 184 KB).  While there are reasonable concerns about the quality of the particular online component of the process (Delborne et al. 2009, PDF, 160 KB) and the demands that such intensive activities place on citizens (Kleinman et al. 2009), the NCTF process is a sound demonstration upon which to build future citizen deliberations (Philbrick and Barandiaran 2009).

In other words, large-scale public engagement activities around nanotechnology are ready for prime time.  As we move into a next decade of large-scale funding and the first forays of regulation, it is time for the NNI to follow through on the early promise of its vision of public engagement in nanotechnology for the benefit of the public, and not just for the benefit of nanotechnology.

This week, the NNI is holding a workshop on Risk Management Methods & Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Nanotechnology, which includes a 15 minute slot for public comment.  David Guston will not be there – the workshop clashes with Passover – AM

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/03/30/public-engagement-with-nanotechnology/feed/ 24 http://2020science.org/2010/02/18/us-government-kicks-nanotechnology-safety-research-up-a-gear/ http://2020science.org/2010/02/18/us-government-kicks-nanotechnology-safety-research-up-a-gear/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:04:44 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2912

It looks like the US is heading for some serious action on addressing the safe development and use of nanotechnology-enabled materials, products and processes in 2011.  Reading through the just-released National Nanotechnology Initiative’s (NNI) Supplement to the President’s 2011 budget [PDF, 1.2 MB], there are some noteworthy inclusions:

• The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requesting $15 million in 2011 to address nanotechnology environment, safety and health issues.  This is the first time that the agency has been listed in the NNI budget supplement as requesting nanotechnology-specific funding.  Previously hobbled in its approach to supporting the responsible development of nanotechnology because of a lack of funding, this should go a long way to help the agency get on top of critical oversight-related questions.  The requested funds will support laboratory and product testing capacity, scientific staff development and training, and collaborative and interdisciplinary research to address product characterization and safety.
• The US Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) also joins the FDA in being part of the NNI budget cross-cut for the first time since the NNI was formed.  For 2011, the CPSC is requesting a much-needed $2.2 million to allow it to participate with other agencies in researching safety aspects of nanomaterials use in consumer products.  Planned work includes developing protocols to assess the potential release of airborne nanoparticles from various consumer products and to determine their contributions to human exposure; determining whether nanomaterials can be used for performance improvement in sports safety equipment such as helmets and kneepads without creating other health hazards; and expanding consumer product testing using scientifically credible protocols to evaluate the exposure potential from nanosilver in consumer products, with special emphasis on exposures to young children.
• The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is requesting $16.5 million for nanotechnology safety research in 2011; over 5 times more than the agency’s 2006 nanotech budget, and $7 million above the estimated 2010 budget.  NIOSH has been leading the charge on developing safe workplace practices for handling engineered nanomaterials in recent years – and all on a shoestring budget.  This significant increase in funding should help the agency address critical research needs it been struggling to cover adequately, including much needed work on exposure measurement and characterization.
• The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) budget for nanotechnology safety research is set to double, going from an estimated $3.6 million in 2010 to a requested $7.3 million in 2011.  The agency will target its nanotechnology safety program to measuring the dynamic physico-chemical and toxicological properties of key nanomaterials and the release of these nanomaterials during manufacturing processes and from products throughout full product life cycles.

When requests from other agencies are included, the 2011 budget request for targeted nanotechnology safety research across the federal government for 2011 comes to $116.9 million – three times the amount invested in 2006.

This is an extremely welcome move, and demonstrates that the US government is committed to investing in research that will underpin the development of responsible nanotechnology.

Back in 2006, I estimated that the US government needed to invest at least $106 million per year in research addressing short term nanotechnology safety issues.  More recently in 2008, I set out funding options for addressing critical nanotechnology safety needs – arguing that between $20 million and $100 million per year should be invested over and above existing funding at the time (around $60 million per year).  While I can’t take credit for the apparent convergence between recommendations and budget requests here, it is gratifying to see agency-wide investment come closer to what has been suggested is needed in order to make headway in underpinning responsible nanotechnology.

Interestingly, budget requests for five key agencies align reasonably closely with those 2008 recommendations.

EPA, NIH (specifically, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences) and NIOSH requests are not too far from what I estimated as a compromise research investment option that lay somewhere between the minimum and the ideal.  What is particularly encouraging though is the requests for NIST and FDA, which far exceed these estimated budgets.

Of course, these requests only tell half the story.  The other half concerns how the funds are spent, and whether they will enable significant progress to be made towards developing responsible uses of nanotechnology.  In the past, the NNI has been criticized for not having a robust nanotechnology safety research strategy and for being weak on supporting targeted safety research within mission-driven agencies.  While the jury is still out on the strategy, there is no doubt that the 2011 marks a significant shift towards supporting safety research within mission-driven agencies.  In 2006, 21% of the nanotechnology environment, safety and health federal research budget was associated with EPA, NIOSH and NIST. for instance  In 2011, that figure is projected to rise to 37%.

We’re not out of the woods yet on ensuring we have the information needed to develop and use new nanotechnology-based materials and products safely.  But it looks like the US is making progress.  And that’s good news for anyone hoping to see the emergence of strong nanotechnology-based solutions to a whole host of challenges.

The unthinkable has happened!  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is poised to get $5 million in crisp new dollars for researching possible workplace risks arising from nanotechnology.  It may not sound like a big deal.  But believe me—it is…

Back in 2005, NIOSH spent $3 million on nanotechnology risk research—scraped together from various internal sources.  It wasn’t a lot, but it allowed the agency to begin chipping away at a growing problem—how to work safely with the increasingly unusual materials coming out of nanotechnology.  Since then, NIOSH has been doing an annual loaves and fish trick—pushing meager internal funds further than they had any right to go in the pursuit of safer workplaces.

But even with inspired leadership and a smart bunch of researchers, $3 million a year was never enough to cover all of the research needed to underpin safe nanotech workplaces.  Back in 2005, we didn’t know how to measure exposure to nanomaterials, how toxic the new materials being produced were, how to prevent exposure, or how to work with and dispose of the materials safely.  Despite some excellent research, we are still a long way from answering these questions—which makes things tough for the producers, users and regulators of nanotechnology-related products.

Of course, the burden for filling in the knowledge gaps doesn’t lie solely on NIOSH’s shoulders.  Other federal agencies are filling in some of the unknowns under the auspices of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).  And collaborations with research partners around the world are helping leverage the limited funds that are available.

Nevertheless, NIOSH is the lead US agency when it comes to underpinning safe workplaces through sound research.  And so far it hasn’t had the resources necessary to do the job when it comes to nanotechnology.

Over the past five years, annual funding for nanotechnology risk research has increased within the agency—it was up to $7 million last year.  But this has always been achieved through redirecting internal funds.  Despite the US Government investing around $1.5 billion per year on nanotechnology research, not a drop of new money has gone NIOSH’s way.

Until now.  Maybe it’s the new administration.  Maybe people are eventually waking up to the fact that successful nanotechnology depends on safe workplaces.  Either way, NIOSH is scheduled to receive $5 million in new funding for nanotechnology risk research next year—bringing the total nanotech research budget to $12 million.

Of course, it isn’t enough to do everything that is necessary.  Even my lowest estimates suggest that the agency need an additional $10 million per year to make significant inroads into the research backlog here.

But it is a major step in the right direction.

That’s not the only good news though.  Browsing through the NNI’s Supplement to the President’s Budget for 2010 [PDF, 3.4MB], a number of agencies will be increasing spending on nanotechnology risk research next year.  Most significantly, the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST) will be investing an additional $3 million, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) an additional $7 million.  Overall, the projected budget for nanotechnology risk research for 2010 is $88 million—$16 million up on this year.

This is great news.  But I do need to add a caveat.  The NNI figures have always tended to encompass research that is relevant to addressing safety concerns, but isn’t necessarily directly focused on the type of research that is needed (this discrepancy was highlighted most recently in a National Academies of Science report).  And so there is a chance that not every dollar in that $88 million will go directly to ensuring the safer use of nanotechnology-related products.

Nevertheless, I am cautiously optimistic that a larger proportion of the funding will be directly relevant to understanding and minimizing risks in 2010.   Funding increases for NIOSH, NIH, NIST and the US Environmental Protection Agency will all directly contribute to a better understanding of potential risks.  And a large chunk of National Science Foundation funding in this area is already tied up in two research centers specifically focused on environmental impacts.

There is still a long way to go if US government-supported research is to get us to where we need to be with developing safe nanotechnologies.  In addition to funding, there is still a need for increased stakeholder involvement in mapping out research directions and a stronger research strategy.

But it seems that under the new administration things are at least moving in the right direction.

And while an additional $5 million for NIOSH may seem a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things, it is a major step forward to protecting one of the more vulnerable groups when it comes to engineered nanomaterials—the people making and using the stuff.