N.C. Toxicologists to Hear About Nanotech’s Pros & Cons

North Carolina is increasingly staking its economic future on nanotechnology, the science of building devices from single atoms and molecules:

* The Research Triangle Regional Partnership last year announced a plan to add 100,000 jobs in the next five years in 10 areas including nanotechnology.

* Earlier this year the W.M. Keck Foundation gave N.C. State University $1 million to help chemistry professors Daniel Feldheim, Bruce Eaton and Stefan Franzen continue research on how the RNA molecule can be used to build inorganic materials.

* In its latest budget proposal, the University of North Carolina system requested $25 million this year and $26 million in 2006-07 for major research initiatives, including nanotechnology.

* Last January the Triangle National Lithography Center – an affiliate of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network – opened at N.C. State’s Engineering and Graduate Research Center with equipment allowing students, faculty and industry to conduct nanotechnology research.

Nanotechnology’s champions claim it offers tremendous benefits from curing diseases to producing energy to cleaning up polluted groundwater. But the question remains: Are researchers, companies and regulators doing what’s necessary to make sure the materials do not wreak environmental havoc? After all, just because a product is useful doesn’t mean it isn’t hazardous to living things, as experience with other highly touted “miracle” materials such as asbestos, DDT and PCBs has shown.

The benefits and risks of nanotechnology will be the topic of discussion at the N.C. Society of Toxicology’s spring meeting, which is scheduled to take place Thursday, Feb. 17 from 12:30 to 5 p.m. at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Titled “What’s the Big Deal About Such a Small Issue?,” the event will feature presentations by Dr. Jim Baker, founding director of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan, and Dr. John Balbus, director of health programs for Environmental Defense (ED) and the founding director of the Center for Risk Science and Public Health at George Washington University.

ED is advocating for increased federal funding for research into potential environmental and health risks of nanotechnology. It’s also calling on industry to develop and adopt “standards of care” for nanotechnology and to that end is participating on multi-stakeholder committees developing risk management standards.

The organization points out that of the billions of dollars being invested in nanotechnology, to date only a few million have been dedicated to understanding the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials. But the limited data available offer cause for concern.

A report released last year by Britain’s Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, for example, warned that nanomaterials behave in unpredictable ways and can be surprisingly toxic. It recommended that sunscreens and other cosmetics containing nanoparticles be kept off the market until their use on skin can be proven safe – a more restrictive precautionary standard than the assumed-safe-until-proven-otherwise policy embraced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The report also criticized U.S. experiments in which nanoparticles were spread on the ground, which could pose risks to organisms in soil and groundwater.

“The timing is right for educating the public about nanotechnology’s benefits and potential risks,” according to a statement from ED about Thursday’s meeting. “Although a few nanomaterials are already on the market, there is still time to redirect the trajectory of nanotechnology toward responsible development.”