Nanotech: Learning from Past Mistakes

August 04, 2008

Tonight I went to a community meeting about a new train line that will be extending through my neighborhood. One of the speakers talked about air quality and said that early in his career, he worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and at that time, no one thought ozone was that big of a health concern. Today, he said, we know better.

That reminded me of a report published recently in Nature Nanotechnology called "Late Lessons From Early Warnings for Nanotechnology." The title is a little too cutesy and confusing for me, but the report has a clear message: History is full of examples of how we overlooked or blatantly ignored harmful things until it was too late. Today we know better.

Some of examples of promising solutions that were found to more harmful than originally thought include:

• radiation
• asbestos
• ozone-damaging halocarbons
• polychlorinated biphenyls, other wise known as PCBs

Drawing from the past, the study establishes 12 lessons learned to the emerging field of nanotechnology.

Some examples of lessons:

• Acknowledge and respond to ignorance, uncertainty and risk in technology appraisal.
• Account for real world conditions in regulatory appraisal.
• Ensure use of "lay" knowledge, as well as specialist expertise.

Andrew Maynard, one of the study's authors (and also an author of a My Take on Discovery Tech) says this in a press release: "Nanotechnology is all about looking to the future -- solving new challenges with new science. "But if it is to succeed, we also need to look back and heed the lessons of the past. And those lessons are clear -- work with foresight, honesty and humility; be grounded in reality; and listen to people. We still have a chance to get it right with nanotechnology. But we are not there yet."