Posts tagged as:

Regulation

Nanotechnology policy and regulation timeline

by Andrew Maynard April 30, 2010

Marc Saner at Carleton University in Canada sent this timeline of key nanotech policy events to me the other day.  It’s probably the most comprehensive compilation of events influencing the development of nanotech policy in America, Europe and Australia I’ve seen to date – well worth taking a look at if you have any interest [...]

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TSCA reform and engineered nanomaterials

by Andrew Maynard April 23, 2010

A bit of a wonky blog I’m afraid, but having seen relatively little on the recently introduced Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 and its relevance to engineered nanomaterials on the web, I thought I would post something short and sweet here. Just over a week ago, Senator Lautenberg introduced a bill in the US Senate [...]

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Living in a post-chemistry world – the regulatory challenges of emerging nanotechnologies

by Andrew Maynard September 11, 2009

Regulators around the world are currently grappling with how to manage the possible risks associated with first generation nanotechnologies.  But increasingly sophisticated nanotechnology-based products are coming – will the old regulations still cover these emerging nanotechnologies, or is a re-think in how substances are regulated in order?  These are some rough notes I prepared for [...]

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Helter skelter nanotechnology

by Andrew Maynard September 5, 2009

There’s an absolute killer of a nanotechnology blog post over on placescope, if you are looking for something to brighten your day.  It appears to be based on some old Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) press releases.  But the process of translation and re-translation has rendered them so wonderfully bizarre as to make any connection [...]

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Nanotechnology: Weighing the risks of regulation

by Andrew Maynard July 8, 2009

I’m often intrigued by the evolution of an article from its early drafts to the final version.  To complement today’s commentary on nanotechnology regulation in the journal Nature, written jointly with David Rejeski, I thought it would be interesting to post an early draft of the same paper here.  This is what the piece looked [...]

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Are we ready for synthetic biology?

by Andrew Maynard March 25, 2009

A new report looks at the challenges of regulating first generation products of synthetic biology. At the J. Craig Venter Institute, scientists are on the verge of creating a living organism from “dead” chemicals, by rebooting a microbe with a new—and completely artificially constructed—genome. At the University of California Berkeley, researchers are modifying microbes to [...]

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Resolving the carbon nanotube identity crisis

by Andrew Maynard October 31, 2008

Twelve months ago today I held a bag of multi-walled carbon nanotubes up before a hearing of the U.S. House Science Committee.  I wanted to emphasize the discrepancy between the current state of the science on carbon nanotubes, and a tendency to classify this substance as the relatively benign material graphite from a safety perspective.  [...]

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Overseeing nanotechnology development

by Andrew Maynard November 18, 2007

If you’ve ever wondered how to deal with the complexities of regulating a twenty first century technology like nanotechnology, wonder no more.  Last week, President Bush’s top advisors on science and the environment published a set of “principles for nanotechnology environment, health and safety oversight”.

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