Nanotechnology and risk: an example of the European Union
Consortium for Science, Policy &
Outcomes (Arizona State University), eta Sánchez-Mazas Katedra
Innovations in scientific technology are one of the keys to the economy. They are essential to be competitive and create jobs. On the road to innovation, both the private and public sectors attach a major importance to nanotechnology.
But what is nanotechnology? In short, science and technology at the atomic and molecular level (to simplify, I do not separate nanoscience from nanotechnology, and I use a "nanotechnology" that encompasses both). That is, an activity that deals with what can be known and manipulated at those very low levels. A nanometer is the millionaire of a meter. In general, nanotechnology works in an area between 1 nanometer and 100 nanometers.
Nanotechnology is not, therefore, a specific device, but a new way of knowing and transforming the world, acting on the nanoscale. Therefore, nanotechnology is a field of research that opens many new ways, "revolutionary", that would deeply affect all technology-based industrial sectors (medicine, energy, information technologies, etc. ). Hence the economic importance of nanotechnology, since a single discovery can be applied in many sectors. In this context, market analysts announce for 2015 a market of up to 750,000 million euros and 2 billion euros and 10 million jobs related to nanotechnology.
But nanotechnology has a less tender face: its potential to generate new environmental and health risks. The manipulation of materials at the atomic and molecular level produces a transformation and improvement in the behavior of these materials (in terms of conductivity, lightness, resistance, etc. ), but in turn, this manipulation can generate risks associated with the physical-structural properties that only occur at these very low levels. This means that the behavior of a nanomaterial in terms of safety cannot be extrapolated from the behavior of a larger material with the same chemical component.
In fact, nanomaterials have a greater facility to enter both the human body and other living organisms, as well as to traverse organs, tissues and cells compared to smaller particles. In this regard, for example, a group study led by Ken Donaldson, University of Edinburgh, showed that needle-shaped carbon nanotubes have an analogous influence on asbestos with the laboratory mouse1. In addition to mobility and forms, the greater surface relative to the volume of nanomaterials determines the dangerousness of nanomaterials. This gives them greater catalytic capacity, but also more aggressive chemical reactivity and therefore greater toxicity.
The size is therefore important and together with the chemical component conditions the dangerousness of the materials. Despite these peculiarities, over 1,300 nanotechnology-based consumer products (including Europe) have already been launched worldwide, 2 without applying specific nanotechnology regulations to ensure the safety of these products. In this regard, the executive power of the European Union, the European Commission, concluded that the regulatory framework prior to the development of nanotechnology - and therefore, without specifically considering nanotechnology - was adequate to "regulate the potential risks to the health, work and environment of nanomaterials". This was collected in the 2008 Regulatory Aspects of Nanomaterials report.
However, another EU institution, the European Parliament, approved in April 2009 a very critical resolution with this main conclusion of the Commission's report. In this resolution, the European Parliament also urged the Commission to revise the regulations in force for April 2011 in order to, once again, clarify the suitability of the regulations to address the risks of nanotechnology (study not yet published).
In the meantime, and thanks to the legislative momentum of the European Parliament, regulations have been adopted for the first time in the world that incorporate specific security measures applied to nanotechnology in the European Union (provided at least national governments are considered). The most significant of these - if we take into account the specialization and variety of regulations - is Regulation 1223/2009 on cosmetic products approved in November 2009 (will enter into force in July 2013). In this regulation, for example, a special scientific assessment of the risks of nanomaterials is required, the labelling of all cosmetic products containing nanomaterials as ingredients is required, or the European Commission, six months before its marketing, is required to transmit information on product safety to those who plan to sell a cosmetic product made up of nanomaterials on the EU market.
Thus, Europe has paved the way for the specific regulation of nanotechnology security. In the European Union, the European Parliament, elected by citizens, has assumed this task as the institution that best represents the interests of consumers and the environment beyond business interests. In short, as the failure of GM agriculture in Europe has shown, society wants a responsible techno-industrial development that takes into account and takes into account security.
1 Poland, CA et al. : "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study", in Nature Nanotechnology 3, (2008), 423-428.
2 Inventory of nanoproducts at www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer.
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