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June 18, 2004 – The White House’s chief science adviser said Wednesday that he believes federal regulators can keep pace with advances in nanotechnology to ensure that those advances will not adversely affect public health and safety.
“I am satisfied that the agencies…they’re doing what is probably appropriate given the indications that we currently have about the dangers or safety of these things,” said John Marburger, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, during a roundtable discussion Wednesday with reporters on nanotechnology policy.
Arun Majumdar, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said he would like to see more research on the potential health risks posed by new nanomaterials before regulators put any new constraints in place. “Do research before we do anything,” he said.
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Concerns over regulating nanotechnology have increased in the past few years as various critics have called for more scrutiny of its environmental and health impacts. In 2002, ETC Group pushed for more oversight of new nanomaterials and research. Other organizations also have advocated adding regulatory measures.
“I think we have to be a little careful about just assuming that it’s just all bad and therefore we have to do something extraordinary at this point,” said Marburger on a question about whether regulators were adequately responding to, without first ensuring the safety of, products introduced to the marketplace, such as sunscreens with nanomaterials.
Marburger noted that products with nanomaterials such as cosmetics have been on the market for a long time, and that it wasn’t as if these substances were new.
“Society has experience with these things,” he said. He also said that companies offering such products are aware of the potential litigation risks they face and have their own internal controls for ensuring safety.
Still, he said it was important for regulators to “keep looking to see if there is a reason for taking action.” Marburger added that he believes that breakthroughs in nanoscience would occur at a pace that would “enable the regulatory process to keep up with it in a responsive way.”
While acknowledging that researchers still don’t have conclusive data as to the safety of most nanomaterials, Marburger said that there are specific steps that agencies need to take to deal with products containing nanomaterials.
He said his office and other officials involved with the National Nanotechnology Initiative were working with agencies that might have jurisdiction over these products.
Marburger was asked if the federal government was doing anything to make sure that scientists don’t get carried away in the pursuit of research that could be harmful to society. He said it would take more than “one crazy scientist” to make something harmful.
At the same time, he said it was important to encourage scientists to pursue research and ideas that could eventually benefit society. “Thank God for crazy scientists,” Marburger said.
“I don’t want to discourage them from thinking they can change the world.”