The World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report 2013 today, and my opinion is buried in there somewhere among the other thousand experts. It’s always a fascinating document, although it is a survey of opinion, hence nanotechnology being defined as a high likelihood high impact risk eight years ago!

That said, the first paragraph of the report flags carbon nanotubes as a risk on a par with asbestos, which although similar in morphology are vastly different in both application and the attitude of manufacturers to health and safety.

The nature of global risks is constantly changing. Thirty years ago, chlorofluorocar­bons (CFCs) were seen as a planetary risk, while threat from a massive cyber attack was treated by many as science fiction. In the same period, the proliferation of nuclear weapons occupied the minds of scientists and politicians, while the proliferation of orbital debris did not. We see a similar story with asbestos then and carbon nanotubes today, and the list goes on.

The good news for nanotechnologies is that their unforeseen consequences are still a low risk, low impact issue, as they have been for many years now, although the potential impact seems to have edged up a little.  More relevant to emerging technologies are the gradual progression towards the upper right quadrant, symbolising high likelihood and high impact, of the unforeseen consequences of new life science technologies and climate change mitigation, i.e. geoengineering (of which more later). To some extent the likelihood and severity of risks are a function of their visibility, the NGO’s that were using nanotechnology as a poster child for all that is bad about technology – creating a north-south imbalance, controlled by an elite, lack or transparency etc. – have all moved onto other issues meaning that while the risks still exist, they are much less visible.

Another issue flagged by the Global Risks Report 2013 is that experts views differ from those of non-specialists, so environmental experts are far more alarmed by climate change than those withe no direct involvement, while experts in nanotechnology and life sciences are less worried about unforeseen consequences than others. The report asks:

Are economists more informed about economic issues than others, or are there ideological differences at play? Are the technological specialists more knowledgeable here, or does their excitement about new technologies dampen their risk perceptions? And where experts are more worried, does that mean that we should listen to them more, or do they just feel more strongly about their issue without knowing enough about other threats?

Perhaps it is all of the above?

Reports of this nature are a useful starting point to identify risks, taking action is more difficult. Indeed some of the most severe risks such as chronic fiscal imbalances or diffusion of weapons of mass destruction are either insoluble or can only be addressed at a global level, but are there others that we can head off?

At Cientifica we have looked at using emerging technologies to mitigate some of the risks identified by the WEF, food and water shortages, and the vulnerability of the supply of critical minerals for example. Through a number of on going initiatives we are working to ensure that we can at least attempt to find cures for some of the inevitable crises that will lead to plenty of human suffering and even war. While technology is not the only solution to risk mitigation, it requires political and diplomatic effort too, though the efforts of the WEF Global Council on Emerging Technologies, technology is at least appearing on the geopolitical agenda with a far greater frequency than in the past.

The Global Risks Report 2013 contains a few questionable statement however, such as this discussion of the need to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria, which seems to advocate diverting effort away from understanding the genomics of bacteria to researching herbal cures!

An increasing amount of effort has been invested in exploring the potential of new life science technologies such as genomics, nano-scale engineering and synthetic biology, without yet yielding new approaches in the treatment of bacterial disease. One unintended consequence of this has been to divert researchers’ attention from the traditional approach of discovering natural compounds to kill bacteria, which may be getting harder.

New for this year is the inclusion of X Factors, summarised below, emerging concerns of possible future importance and with unknown consequences, developed in conjunction with Nature.

Runaway Climate Change

The threat of climate change is well known. But have we passed the point of no return? What if we have already triggered a runaway chain reaction that is in the process of rapidly tipping Earth’s atmosphere into an inhospitable state?

 

Significant Cognitive Enhancement

Once the preserve of science fiction, superhuman abilities are fast approaching the horizon of plausibility. Will it be ethically accepted for the world to divide into the cognitively-enhanced and unenhanced? What might be the military implications?

 

Rogue Deployment of Geoengineering

In response to growing concerns about climate change, scientists are exploring ways in which they could, with international agreement, manipulate the earth’s climate. But what if this technology were to be hijacked by a rogue state or individual?

 

Costs of Living Longer

We are getting better at keeping people alive for longer. Are we setting up a future society struggling to cope with a mass of arthritic, demented and, above all, expensive, elderly who are in need of long term care and palliative solutions?

 

Discovery of Alien Life

Given the pace of space exploration, it is increasingly conceivable that we may discover the existence of alien life or other planets that could support human life. What would be the effects on science funding flows and humanity’s self-image?It was only in 1995 that we first found evidence that other stars also have planets orbiting them. Now thousands of “exoplanets” revolving around distant stars have been detected. NASA’s Kepler mission to identify Earth-sized planets located in the “Goldilocks Zone” (not too hot, nor too cold) of Sun-like stars, has only been operating for 3 years and has already turned up thousands of candidates, including one the size of Earth. The fact that Kepler has found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy. In 10 years’ time we may have evidence not only that Earth is not unique, but that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Every few years there is a call for nano materials and food to be labeled and the rationale is that in the case of GMO’s it allowed consumers to make an informed choice. An article GM a “cautionary tale” for nanotechnology  caught my eye:

However, the author states:“The GM food rejection in OECD countries provides an illustration of what needs to be avoided. At the same time, despite all warning, there are signs that nano food products may face the exact same consumer rejection as GM food.”

But is this really true?

Food, certainly here in the UK, is over labeled if anything and a trawl around the contents of the kitchen fridge reveals things like “fresh everyday tender and tasty living baby leaf lettuce”, some “air dried and simply sliced pepperoni, a “Calabria Inspired Pizza with Spicy Schiacciata Salami, Red Onion and Fig” and some “Sweet Cured Smoked Back Bacon with Maple Syrup.”

So before we get round to looking at the back or side of the package the ingredients were already being bombarded with so much meaningless information that nobody understands. I spent ten years in Spain so I am aware of the difference between hojiblanca and arbequina olives, although I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference if they were on a pizza, but for most people olives come in two varieties, black and green (and perhaps the pimiento stuffed ones you find in a martini)

The crux of the problem is that outside of the food pages of the national newspapers, which are written for a largely metropolitan readership who care passionately about the provenance of their salami and can taste the minute differences in taste between various regions of Umbria, most people think they don’t care what they’re eating. For the last 40 years people have been happily shoveling down trans fats and polyunsaturated oils, all of which are essentially man-made creations and now beginning to have a major effect on public health. The same applies to the dreaded pink slime, the mechanically recovered ‘meat’ which has been used for years with no one noticing, and is one of a multitude of ingredients in processed foods which need not be labeled as anything other than ‘beef.’

Which brings me onto the subject of afternoon tea, a refreshing cup of Ceylon tea accompanied by one of Heston Blumethal’s ‘Earl Grey and Mandarin Hot Cross Buns,’ the ingredients for which are given below.  But did I read the ingredients before  I bought them? Before I toasted one – inadvertently creating  few species of carbon nanomaterials –  and slapped on some ‘Brittany butter with sea salt crystals’? And if any of the ingredients did contain any nanomaterial, whether natural or man made, would it, or should it have made any difference?

Is it nano? Does it matter?

Much of the past decade has been spent worrying about the potential toxicity of nanomaterials. We have had numerous government-funded projects, scores of publications by environmental groups, intense lobbying demanding the labelling of nanomaterials, and even a law suit. But while the developed world agonises over the use of nanomaterials, much of the rest of the world is simply getting on with using them.

As I’ve travelled the world over the last year I’ve seen numerous applications of nanomaterials that would allow them to come into direct contact with the environment – whether through ingestion or release into watercourses – with applications ranging from coatings on fruit to building materials and textiles. In addition there are numerous catalytic applications, such as removing ethylene in fruit storage facilities in order to prevent ripening. Nobody I spoke to had any idea of what would happen to these materials over the course of their lifetime, and probably didn’t much care either. Many of these applications would and could never be used in Europe or the US, but in other parts of the world where economic need takes precedence over human or environmental  issues, they are being increasingly applied.

So while much of the ire of environmental groups has been directed at the potential use of nanomaterials by large corporations, Kraft, L’Oreal and the like, their use by small companies in the developing world has gone largely unnoticed. And the use of nanomaterials is virtually undetectable, the technologies to screen large amounts of fruit and vegetables for traces of nanomaterials doesn’t exist.

The real threat to the environment doesn’t come from “greedy multinationals trying to ram untested materials with unknown effects” down people’s throats, but from small companies from Africa to China trying to make an extra shilling, rupee or yuan.

There has been plenty of discussion from all quarters about how the UK failed to grasp the significance of nanotechnology, and instead spent years fretting over heath and safety implications. Without any real nanotechnology related activity in UK industry, worrying about the potential downside is like spending all your time planning what you will do if you win the lottery. But you have to be in it to win it.

The UKs Nanotechnology knowledge Transfer Network, the body charged with”accelerating innovation in nanoscale technologies” has contributed an article to Nanotechnology Nowlooking at responsible nanotechnology. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s a good round up, but after ten years of dealing with every part of the UK government that touches on nanotechnology, from the Treasury to DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) I can’t remember anyone extolling the potential economic benefits of nanotechnology, and it’s a real tragedy.

The UK has thousands of word class scientists beavering away on everything from graphene to cancer treatment and instead of being encouraged and aided to spin out their research into world-class companies, the government attitude is solely concerned with what might happen if someone “accidentally” inhaled a kilo of carbon nanotubes or managed to munch their way through a family sized bucket of fried chicken laced with quantum dots. It is probably why our rankings indicate that there is not too much difference between India and the UK as a place to commercialise nanotech.

Iran has always been a source of fascination, a place of ancient culture and history and now a country making a lot of noise about science and technology, so I was pleased to be invited by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council to attend the Iran Nano 2011 exhibition in Tehran.

As I’d spent the previous few days in Taiwan at the Taiwan Nano 2011 exhibition, it was a good opportunity to contrast the two events and try to judge whether there was any truth to the claims that Iran is becoming a world-class player in nanotechnology.

The unique aspect of Iranian nanotechnology is that because of the various international sanctions over the past thirty years it’s not the kind of place where you can just order an AFM or an electron microscope from a major US or Japanese supplier. As a result there was lots of home made kit on display, from sputtering systems, through surface analysis to atomic force microscopes. Looking at the results, the home grown kit was certainly more than adequate, with the main difference being the red LED displays and 20 turn potentiometers, things that have been long since replaced by digital control in the rest of the world. Does that stop an AFM from producing decent results though? Probably not. There was also a lot of discussion about selling this very low cost instrumentation outside Iran, although I suspect that IP issues may then become a concern.

So, Iranian scientists have engineered their way around the embargo on selling high tech equipment of Iran – and there was no shortage of high-end laptops on display either – but so often science is not about how much stuff you have in your lab, but what you can do with it.

The human resource development programs in Iran were also impressive. Iran has no shortage of universities, and it is also a big country with a significant population. There was mention of the country producing over 800 nanotechnology PhDs a year which is a huge number when compared with the rest of the region. A major part of one of the ceremonies I attended was the award of cash prizes to research students and small businesses, and that is always a great motivator.

There is plenty going on, much more than one would expect, so how has Iran managed to achieve this? It’s a combination of political support (and well done to the various scientists who managed to achieve this) and coordination. INIC runs the whole show, something describes as “Supreme supervision in realization of goals and programs.” This ranges from involving school children in nanotechnology to commercialisation and international development of technologies, and having a single coordinated and focussed vision rather than a set of squabbling and overlapping agencies seems to be something we all can learn from.

One of the other impressive parts of the program is the creation of the Tech-Market Services Institute, which specifically focuses on commercialisation of nanotechnologies and shows what good coordination can achieve.  Not so much an incubator as a collection of third party experts whose services are subsidised by INIC, the goal is to make the transition from basic research to commercial products as smooth and painless as possible, leaving academics to worry about the technology rather than legal or financial issues. This provides a pathway from assessing the level of technology readiness through assistance with patenting, documentation, market surveys, business plan writing, standards & certification, financial aid and venture capital and finally international marketing. Nice touches such as paying 80% of patenting costs seem to really encourage commercial development, with the remaining 20% paid for through the program if the patent application proves successful.

So what of the claims that Iran is becoming a world player in nanotechnology, ranking fourth in the world in terms of publications? Certainly the amount of papers published in international journals is rapidly increasing, and using this as raw data to justify being a world power is no more than many academics departments do. Discussing this with senior editors at some of the higher impact journals indicates that although the volume is high the quality is not, but it is improving. One would not expect Iran to be at the level of Germany, but it is among the best of the developing economies.

In terms of commercial products there were many on display. Agriculture was well represented, with fertilisers, pesticides, coatings to reduce fruit spoilage and even catalytic systems to remove ethylene from fruit storage facilities. Construction materials were another large area, with a wide range of building materials on display. Absent were areas such as semiconductors and medical devices, but once again their absence illustrates that INIC is focussing much more on the solutions demanded by Iranian industry rather than trying to compete with more advanced economies. There is also substantial work going n the the field of renewable energy with some large investments taking place.

Simon Brown, who also attended the exhibition, was similarly impressed, and raises questions about the proliferation of nanomaterials and whether adequate safety testing is being performed before they are deployed.

So Iranian nanotechnology seems to be in rude health. It has plenty of funding, political support at high level and most importantly, plenty of smart people involved. It is also developing stronger international links, hosting the meeting of the Asia Nano Forum and attracting exhibitors from companies and organisations based in Europe and Asia. I don’t think that Iran will be challenging the US and Germany as the best places to commercialise nanotechnologies anytime soon, but I suspect that the aim is more to support domestic industry and in that respect things seem to be working out rather well.

The list of new and emerging technologies enabled by the convergence of nanotechnology, life sciences and information technology is one item longer today following the announcement from the University of Glasgow about inorganic biology.

The project head, Lee Cronin explains that “All life on earth is based on organic biology (i.e. carbon in the form of amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars etc) but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.

“What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology.”

But professor Cronin has just used a number of phrases, perhaps intentionally, which will trigger yet another debate about playing God, worries about what happens when they escape from the lab and take over the world, and brings up the subject of responsible versus irresponsible innovation.

Whether developing a technology such as inorganic biology is classified as responsible or irresponsible depends as much on your ethical and religious views as it does on the science. The only sure thing is that the technology will be developed anyway once the genie is out of the bottle, and as with many other technologies we have to attempt to manage them in a way that gives us the best shot at producing beneficial effects.

Responsible innovation is something that seems to be trending, at least in Europe, as a way of ensuring that new and emerging technologies do not create any unpleasant side effects. To some extent it seems similar to the precautionary principle, which has been used as an argument against everything from GMO’s to nanotechnology, and can be used as an effective tool to sway political opinion against any new technology.

I would suggest, however, that thinking about responsible innovation should start only when technology reaches the stage of commercialisation, and that everything up to that point is just scientific curiosity. The howls of “what if science creates a monster?” have to be balanced against the progress that science has made over the past three hundred years, and while the products of science have not always been beneficial, we can live lives free of cholera and access whatever information we want whenever we want. It is impossible to see, from the lab bench, the final application of  any technology – neither the inventors of the transistor or science fiction writers predicted the mobile phone, and I can’t remember anyone in the dot.com era predicting Facebook or Twitter.

So responsible innovation should be something for companies to practice rather than scientists, just like open innovation. It’s an idea that fits nicely alongside the drift towards sustainability, shifting from the linear take-make-waste model that has been used ever since the industrial revolution to a more cyclical zero waste one enabled by life sciences. But the concept of responsible innovation needs more definition. Was the development nuclear weapons responsible innovation, as some would argue that they ended the Second World War and prevented a third one, or does their acquisition by rogue states such as North Korea render the whole field irresponsible? Was the development of polymers responsible, as it enabled huge advances in quality of life, or irresponsible as much of the plastic waste produced ends up in land fills or in the world’s oceans?

While industry is changing, and far more questions are being asked about safety and ethics than in the mid twentieth century, the idea of responsible innovation becomes far more dangerous in the hands of governments and regulatory bodies. An increasing number of publicly funded projects require applicants to answer all kinds of questions about the ethics and sustainability of the proposed research. Adding a fluffy ill defined term such as ‘responsible’ to the mix raises the risk of research being judged by personal rather than scientific criteria. It would certainly irresponsible to start demanding answers about responsibility too early, and before defining an end use or application of the technology, something that would risk putting the brakes on innovation and add to regulatory confusion. The use of nanotechnology in food, drugs or solar cells, for example, requires vastly different regulatory structures, even if the same nanomaterials are used for each application.

Is inorganic biology responsible or irresponsible innovation? It is way too early to answer that question, and we shouldn’t even try until we know what it will be used for. It may even prove to be a scientific dead end, and much of the debate about ethics, safety and regulation will end up as productive and relevant as the debate about ‘gray goo.’

The White House Emerging Technologies Interagency Policy Coordination Committee (ETIPC) has developed a set of principles (pdf) specific to the regulation and oversight of applications of nanotechnology, to guide the development and implementation of policies at the agency level.

I’m glad to see that it addresses those two old bugbears, the confusion between risk and hazard and the prejudging of issues without reference to scientific evidence (my italics below).

Nanomaterials should not be deemed or identified as intrinsically benign or harmful in the absence of supporting scientific evidence, and regulatory action should be based on such scientific evidence. Where there is evidence of either safety or likely harm, the corresponding regulatory actions are usually clear. For some statutes, the mere existence of a hazard, regardless of the probability of it causing harm, may trigger some form of regulatory action. In general, however, and to the extent consistent with law, regulation should be based on risk, not merely hazard, and in all cases the identification of hazard, risk or harm must be evidence-based. In applying these principles, regulators should use flexible, adaptive, and evidence-based approaches that avoid, wherever possible, hindering innovation and trade while fulfilling the Federal Government’s responsibility to protect public health and the environment.

It is an approach which appears to diverge slightly from the European adoption of the precautionary principle, which states that “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.”

As with any regulation, the problems will arise not from the the original wording, but through its (mis)interpretation and inconsistent application.

I’ll leave the professional report readers such as 2020Science to wade through the Friends of the Earth’s latest broadside against nanotechnology which claims that it “isn’t green enough.”

This brief report in “The Australian” neatly sums up the argument, which is that although nanotechnology has been spoken of as a solution to some aspects of climate change, it is is less green than other alternative approaches such as sitting still and waiting for the world to end, and therefore it shouldn’t be funded.

Some of the arguments are clearly rather silly and selective. Claiming for example that “the energy conversion efficiency of nano solar panels was 10 per cent less than conventional silicon panels” is rather unfair given the stage of the development of the technology and ignores the amount of R&D going into areas such as organic photovoltaics. Similarly claims that “processing may also involve the use toxic chemicals and solvents, and the release greenhouse gases such as methane” could be applied to almost every area of human activity, or indeed inactivity.

Technology always needs to be seen over time, and the fact that Stephenson’s Rocket wasn’t as fast as a galloping horse in its first trial probably led to similar calls for the technology to be abandoned.

Perhaps the most depressing thing is that in order to make the argument that nanotech isn’t green enough, Friends of the Earth has to waste its (and our) time shooting down some of the wilder claims about nanotechnologies, while ignoring much of the rational scientific work that going on.

What I’d love to hear from an environmental group is a rational argument about nanotechnology. How do we encourage applications that could limit climate change and protect the environment while monitoring and averting any unintended risks and consequences? Carping from the sidelines may create a few sound bites, but it won’t change government policy and nor will it stymie human creativity when it comes to applying technology.

To have a real impact, environmental groups need to make themselves part of the debate rather than sitting in the corner sulking with their backs to the everyone.

Reading reports of government plans for the regulation of nanotechnology sometimes feels like being on death row. The outcome is inevitable, and all you can do is hope that it will be short and painless. The European Commission has been debating regulations for the best part of a decade,and now apparently has been given a deadline of 2011 by the European Parliament to “properly regulate nanotechnology.”

Plastics & Rubber Weekly reports that the Belgian Environment Minister, Paul Magnette proposed five elements that should be included in nanotechnology legislation, including

• A register of nanomaterials used within the EU is established, so regulators can trace the origin of any nanoparticles to their source if they cause health or environmental problems.
• Manufacturers and retailers inform consumers of the presence of nanomaterials in their products
• Regulations provide for risk evaluation and management of nanomaterials at an EU level
• Member states also draft integrated national strategies for nanotechnology risk management, information dissemination and monitoring
• Claims made on labels of products containing nanomaterials are controlled

As with any legislation the devil will be in the detail, and that will determine whether the result is to shift all production of basic nanomaterials out of the EU or simply create a lot of meaningless labels that consumers won’t understand. Unfortunately, that plays into the hands of pressure groups who managed to influence public opinion against all forms of GMOs based on some rather dodgy science, and leaves companies using nanomaterials between a rock and hard place. Do they add a (nano) suffix to ingredients and risk a consumer backlash, or do they simply fudge the definition – many commonly used materials contain quite a range of particle sizes, and so adjusting to the mean size to 100.001nm could easily sidestep any EU legislation.

But the bottom line is that anyone involved in nanomaterials would like the politicians to make their minds up about regulation. Many companies are unwilling to spend large sums on developing technologies and products they may be outlawed or perceived differently by consumers as a result of pending legislation. The sooner that rules are in place the easier it will be to justify developing nanomaterial based products.

Ever since someone choked a mouse with carbon nanotubes in an attempt to prove their toxicity, people have been running round giving huge doses of nanomaterials to everything from bacteria to fish. Of course the huge doses involved, far in excess of anything that would be encountered in the real world, could be equally well used to prove that bananas are dangerous.

In the same spirit, a team of researchers have determined in the words of New Scientist that “Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions” the lead reseracher seems to have a bit of an issue with nanom aterials anyway, stating that “These particles are developed with the express purpose of killing things.” Hmmm.

As one commenter points out the tub dosed with 55 micrograms of silver nanoparticles per gram of sludge, which is allegedly a concentration of silver similar to levels often found in waste water, is some 35 micrograms above the level where silver recovery is economically viable.

However, the results are inclusive, leading the researchers to conclude

a) that further experiments are necessary, “including the setting up of a complete wetland ecosystem to measure how it might be affected by waste water containing silver nanoparticles” and

b) that if the results were replicated on a large scale, it could “further contribute to concerns about global changes in climate”.

This all leads me to conclude that New Scientist is becoming less scientific and more like the Daiy Mail.