My esteemed (and allegedly cute) colleague Dexter Johnson comments on a number of recent nanoparticle toxicity projects and wonders what is the point of them. I’ve often asked the same question (and been asked to leave the room as a result), but there does seem to be a weird academic bias towards reviews and public consultation and I think I know why.
On several occasions when I’ve been in a bar with eminent toxicologists they have admitted that there is absolutely no way that we could ever understand the toxicology of every kind of nanoparticle, and there is no point in trying. What you can do is draw broad conclusions, so that if we have a high aspect ratio structure such as a long carbon nanotube we know that it won’t be cleared by an alveolar macrophage etc, and then we usually get into a discussion about whether anyone is ever likely to inhale enough of the stuff to have a problem, given that we treat most nanomaterials with rather more caution than we did asbestos.
So for most toxicologists the choice is clear. Get paid to do some science or sit about for a bit?
When toxicologists ask for a global well funded long term study to allow the modelling of the interaction of various categories of nanomaterials with the environment, the funding agencies can only manage rustle up a few hundred thousand euros for a two or three year project. That gets you nowhere in understanding a new and rapidly emerging class of materials, so we just end up paying great scientists to sit on their backsides and browse the web for a few years.
The Dear Leader - Ready to Debate Nanotechnology?
The Australian branch of Friends of the Earth, who really really hate nanotechnology, yes really, and will do anything they can to stop it (despite not being quite sure what it is) are threatening apoplexy, tantrums and running naked through the streets of Canberra painted blue as a result of the Australian Governments decision to have a “Nanodialogue on Nanotechnology and Food Regulation.”
The do seem rather Stalinist when it comes to the idea any discussion of the role of nanotechnologies, and have refused to take part with the assertion that the “primary purpose (of the Australian Office of Nanotechnology) in this area is to promote uncritical public acceptance of nanotechnology.”This does seem a little hypocritical for an organisation which seems to have gone out of its way to promote uncritical public hostility to nanotechnologies.
Part of FoE’s beef is that the government has made a decision to fund nanotechnology in Australia without consulting every Tom, Dick or Bruce about what they are funding, and giving them an option to veto any bit of science funding that they don’t like the look of. Unfortunately for FoE, the concept of representative democracy is something they can add to their list of things they don’t quite understand. Another addition could be how science actually works – there is no simple path from science to application, as this list of unintended consequences of science, quite brilliantly illustrates, with accidents leading to the invention of the telephone, antibiotics and photography.
They have even gone as far as to send a letter to the Australian Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, outlining the circumstances under which they would take part – presumably having an anti nano ranter on stage would appease them.
What really worries me is not so much that FoE seem to be rather dim when it comes to handling ideas any more complex than ‘environment good – everything else bad” but the venomous hostility of some NGOs, FoE Australia included, to any kind of informed and rational debate about nanotechnologies. I can quite understand why Jim Jong-Il might not want a public debate on his handling of the North Korean economy, but what on earth are the Friends of the Earth so afraid of?
There must be something in the water in Switzerland this year. Hot on the heels of the International Risk Governance Council‘s rather pointless report comes another missive from TA-Swiss (Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften) looking at nanofood.
The TA-SWISS study concludes that people with certain “nutritional styles” could actually be open minded about food containing additives produced by nanotechnology. Even more so if we assume that nanofoods might be easier to manage and/or could have added health benefits. In developing countries, such additives could help to combat malnutrition; for example, by fortifying basic foods with iron, zinc, vitamin A or folic acid. It must, however, be taken into account that such products must also be affordable and accessible to the demographic groups that need them.
I’m not sure whether to yawn or gnash my teeth at this point – doing both might result in another trip to the dentist so I’ll just curse softly. Why do people waste time putting out this kind of tedious, derivative and inconclusive research? Is the credit crunch already affecting the supply of scientific insight and creativity?
Warning! Contents May Dissapoint
The “International Risk Governance Council,” a Geneva based organisation “whose purpose is to help the understanding and management of global risks that impact on human health and safety, the environment, the economy and society at large” sent me their latest deep thoughts on Risk Governance of Nanotechnology Applications in Food and Cosmetics today, and it proved a rather interesting read.
Anyone following the various debates about the safety of nanotechnologies will be aware that since the seminal Royal Society report in 2004, all other reports have concluded that we either don’t know enough about the science/toxicology/applications/exposure routes yet to make an informed decision, or said to hell with rational science called for an outright ban on the use of nanotechnologies in food/water/industry/fun.
I took a look at the IRGC report and blow me if it wasn’t just as vapid and inconclusive as all the rest.I passed it to one of my colleagues in case I’d missed something and she commented “the report says the same as all the other “risk” reports since the first royal society one. Seems like there is nothing else to say!”
What is particularly staggering is that in an area as important as health and safety no one seems able to commission any real research, and most of the information in the report seems to have come from a couple of weeks of googling, with the consequent lack of gravitas associated with any publication that merely collates other public domain data. Rather than actually doing any work, the IRGC report simply makes comments along the lines of “In the absence of reliable data, the Nanowerk internet portal provides an overview of current or future fields of applications in agriculture, food processing, food packaging and food supplements. Now Nanowerk is an excellent content aggregator, but it’s hardly Nature now is it? The next thing you know we’ll have people quoting TNTlog as an authoritative source!
Anyway to spare you wading through 42 pages of summarising what has already been summarised by other people let’s cut straight to the conclusion:
The food and cosmetics “industries should make a concerted effort to reflect on critical comments and use them constructively, as an incentive to assure the responsible production and use of nanomaterials.
Is that it?
According to the IRGC, the final recommendations will be published in an IRGC Policy Brief in spring 2009, we can hardly wait, and we hope they come up with a bit more insight in the meantime.
A Teeny Wafer Thin Nanotube Sir?
The big news while I was on my transglobal sabbatical was that Ken Donaldson and Andrew Seaton have finally proved that long nanotubes produce the same kind of indigestion (or frustrated phagocytosis) in macrophages as a seven course meal in a great restaurant such as Grenoble’s l’Escalier sometimes causes in me.
Richard Jones blogs it nicely here (and someone else has bloged L’Escaliers oddly delicious foie gras lollipops here) In the interests of science I submitted myself to a gastroscopy earlier in the year, so I can sympathise with the cells, although I did have the benefit of a sedative and had to satisfy my curiosity by watching the movie afterwards.
Of course it has been known for a long time that asbestos fibres cause frustrated phagocytosis leading to various diseases such as asbestosis, so the results are hardly surprising, but it does show just how long it can take for science to prove (and only in the case of mice and certain types of nanotubes) what we already intuitively know.
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