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Mar. 10, 2006 – The Safer Nano 2006 symposium held in Beaverton, Ore., on Monday and Tuesday looked at best practices and regulatory activities being developed to ensure “Nano for a Safer World.”

The Oregon locale was a logical choice, a state whose green credentials are impeccable as the home of environmental activism, the nation’s first bottle bill, and state laws requiring reforestation and salmon restoration projects.

“This is a unique meeting in the country,” said Skip Rung, executive director of Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), which sponsored the event along with FEI Co., Oregon Health & Science University’s OGI School of Science and Engineering, and Kennedy/Jenks Consultants.

The latest state environmental initiative is ONAMI’s Safer Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Initiative (SNNI), led by University of Oregon’s Jim Hutchison. Oregon academics are aiming to get a head-start on developing a niche for their nanotech funding.

Hutchison and Peter Mirau and Rajesh Naik, of the Air Force Research Lab in Ohio, said their goals are to enhance integration of SNNI activities and identify and explore areas of mutual interest between the two efforts.

“One of the things the Air Force does is put things into the air,” Mirau noted. Nanocomposites and interfaces can help reduce weights of materials, though researchers are still in the fundamental research stage.

Hutchison’s green approach is to test properties of various nanoparticles, then take that information and feed it back into product design repeatedly, while watching out for waste, toxicity and other environmental hazards.

Barbara Karn, currently at the Wilson International Center for Scholars during a sabbatical from her position at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, described problems and principles of green nano.

“Today we are attempting to look at risks proactively,” said Karn, a chemist and marine ecologist. She advised workers in nanotech to consider risk, both real and perceived; governance of risk; effects of nanotech research on the environment; and ways to prevent harm.

Governance of risk is a regulatory matter, she said, requiring careful definitions, measurements and even names for the new nanomaterials. Are they chemicals, or products? Who does the regulating? What is new? What standards should be adopted? Are they harmful or beneficial?

Questions that need to be addressed include, how do you characterize risk? Under the 30-year old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA tracks more than 75,000 industrial chemicals, Karn said, although not all are toxic.

Karn is concentrating on a green nanotechnology framework, looking for products that don’t hurt the environment and ones that can help it in areas like remediation, energy conservation and waste reduction.

The EPA began to devise a plan for dealing with existing or future problems associated with nanotech six years ago. They have looked at green energy and manufacturing, toxicology, life cycle aspects, and biological actions, such as accumulation and availability.

EPA screens pre-manufacturing notices required under the TSCA, which has exemptions for very small volumes of materials. This applies to nanomaterials. “The EPA is trying to get around this, so they can look at nanomaterials, too,” she said.

Regulators want to establish a voluntary program for corporations that don’t fall under TSCA. “This can help EPA conduct a risk assessment and develop a permanent and mandatory program,” Karn said. “Nobody knows enough to do this yet.”

The alternative isn’t pleasant. Some alarmists are suggesting banning nanomaterials, others are asking for labeling regulations.

Work on environment, health and safety (EHS) issues has been done at the federal level, chiefly during a Congressional subcommittee hearing on the topic, but most state level nanotech projects aren’t singling out these issues for special attention.

Chief among EHS problems that need to be solved on the local research and industrial level are hundreds of unanswered questions relating to new nanoparticles and materials, a point made by speaker after speaker during the symposium. A second issue for the field is that two different approaches are being proposed, Rung said.

He noted that some critics advocate new laws and regulations, because they say nanoparticles are different from other materials. However, he and others believe current regulations are flexible enough to cover nanotechnology impacts.

Concentrating on safety and health provides opportunities to lower materials used in various processes, the NanoBusiness Alliance’ Sean Murdock said.

“Using nanomaterials to impart new properties to materials is not new, but the ability to control those properties by controlling the composition, size and spacing of nanoparticles is new.” He noted that the EPA is the most likely nanotech regulator, though OSHA rules protect workers and FDA protects consumers.

“This meeting is a telling example of how things are different” today from the past, he said, allaying fears that nanoparticles could be the next asbestos or genetically modified organisms. “The apparatus is already in place, although we lack resources and data” to devise specific regulations.