ICON Blog

A new piece published today at Environmental Expert by attorney Lynn Bergeson, herself a nano environmental expert, describes in some detail the goals and objectives of the GoodNanoGuide, an online resource for sharing information about safe handling of nanoparticles in an occupational setting. Believe me when I say such information is more timely than ever. Many many thanks to Lynn for this unsolicited endorsement of our project. I'm looking forward to the nano-safety skits that Lynn, Shaun Clancy and I are organizing for NanoBusiness 2009. Should be fun. Stay tuned.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association held its annual meeting this year in Toronto with a theme of Discoveries Beyond Borders. After the Monday morning keynote address by Dr. Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, the next two keynotes were on issues AIHA has identified as “two major challenges in the field: sustainability and nanotechnology.” Addressing the issue of sustainability was Edward L. Quevedo, JD, special counsel chair for the sustainability group at Farella Braun and Martel. (An interview with Mr. Quevedo about his keynote is posted here.)

My talk kicked off Wednesday’s focus on nanotechnology. Before and after the keynote talk I was able to hang out at NIOSH’s exposition booth where I was graciously provided an internet-connected computer on which to live-demo the GoodNanoGuide to passersby. But the invitation to speak before a crowd of about 1000 occupational safety professionals provided an ideal opportunity to formally launch the GoodNanoGuide, an international online collaborative wiki designed to create a forum for people seeking to work with engineered nanomaterials safely. The format of the keynote address did not allow for questions, so AIHA set aside a separate time and place for an “Ask the Expert” session later on Wednesday morning. This session was attended by about a hundred people and we eschewed the formal structure of me sitting up on a dais for a more informal conversational mode. This involved me running up and down the aisles passing the microphone back and forth among the questioners, myself and others in the audience better equipped to answer a given question. (Most times, this was Chuck Geraci, Laura Hodson or Donna Heidel from NIOSH who could report on specific research being done at the institute to inform occupational practice.)

Feedback to the talk and to the GoodNanoGuide was positive and we noted a major spike in visits to the site during the meeting. But even more importantly, we are already beginning to field requests to join the GoodNanoGuide community. (We map their locations here.) This is vital because the site will only grow into the knowledge base we all want it to become if a diverse and robust community of experts contributes. Join us by visiting the GoodNanoGuide here and registering as a contributor.

The Spring Issue of Nanotechnology Law and Business is out now (subscription only) with an article penned by myself and Matthew Jaffe of Crowell & Moring entitled, "The GoodNanoGuide: A Novel Approach for Developing Good Practices for Handling Engineered Nanomaterials in an Occupational Setting." In it we describe the history, structure and purpose of the project. For more information, see this slideshow or join us next week at the NSTI Nanotech 2009 conference.

The Nanotech Conference and Expo 2009 (May 3-7) organized by NSTI promises to be a week filled with nano goodness. For those who haven't yet planned every last minute here is a schedule of activities that ICON is hosting or involved with:

Monday
1:30-3:30 pm EHS Workplace Practices [Room 351 CF]
[This is part of a whole track on EHS that begins at 10:30 am with a session on Nano Toxicology Studies]

Tuesday
2:00-4:00 pm I will be in the Expo [Rice Booth 901] to answer questions about CBEN or ICON.
5:00-6:00 pm ICON reception at the Expo [Rice Booth 901]

Wednesday
10:30 am GoodNanoGuide Sneak Preview [Room 361 CF]: A hands-on demo of our newest project. Please bring your wireless-enabled laptop to take the GoodNanoGuide for a spin.

I hope to see you there!

Janelia Farm, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute located outside Washington, DC, was the picturesque setting of HHMI’s annual Environmental Health & Safety Directors Conference. The theme this year: Nanotechnology and the New Economy—Modern Challenges in ES&H Management. In the audience were about 50 high-level EHS managers at universities that are part of the HHMI network. The level of prior knowledge about nanotechnology was mixed. As we learned, some were very knowledgeable, others knew in which labs nanotech research was being pursued at their institutions, and a few had little more than passing knowledge.

The science keynote address was given by Drew Endy, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. A very interesting and provocative speaker (though in an unassuming way), Endy gave a series of slides he calls “postcards” outlining the ways in which synthetic biology is being developed. His presentation style consisted of speaking to the audience using slides with minimal content, except when needed to illustrate a technical point. (I liked this approach better than the “stuff lots of content onto your slides so people would not even have had to be there to get the gist. Which usually doesn’t work.) So quotable was he that my Twitterstream on this (#HHMIEHS) does a better job capturing the highlights than I can do here. Suffice it to say that Endy effectively presented a lot of the cutting edge developments in synbio, if he fell a tad short on offering advice to EHS managers about how to handle safety issues in their institutions. The closest he came was an illustration of a student’s home-brew synbio lab, constructed in her bedroom closet, in which her coat was clearly visible among the instruments. I had the same reaction to his talk that I had to the synbio thread at last summer’s GRC on Science and Technology in Society: Wow.

My session was entitled, “Nanotechnology & Safety Management—A New Relationship”. Joining me were Jo Anne Shatkin, PhD, Managing Director of CLF Ventures and Charles Geraci, PhD, CIH, Coordinator of the Nanotechnology Program at the US National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH). Given the content of our prepared remarks the three of us decided we had been placed in the agenda in the wrong order and staged a soft coup the morning of the meeting, rearranging ourselves in a more sensible order. Questions were held until the end of our talks.

Thus it was that Jo Anne started off the session with a nice overview of nanotechnology and the attendant issues that complicate an assessment of its health and safety impacts. She outlined her approach to risk assessment of nanomaterials, presented in more detail in her new book, “Nanotechnology: health and environmental risks.”

Chuck Geraci was up next, giving a thorough account of NIOSH’s many activities in nanotechnology. He spent some time describing a simple framework for identifying occupational safety issues, summarizing some of NIOSH’s recent toxicological research, including recent work presented at the SOT meeting showing long-straight multi-walled carbon nanotubes penetrating the pleural lining (AKA “The Image”). NIOSH commentary on this work can be found at the NIOSH blog. He ended by plugging the updated guidance document along with a recent document on medical surveillance programs, both available at the NIOSH nanotechnology page.

Faced with a room full of EHS Directors gathered to hear the latest about nanotechnology, what else could I do but talk at some length about the GoodNanoGuide? I gave my pitch, walked through a brief live demo of the site and invited them to participate.

For once, the schedule was constructed to allow for a generous Q&A session, even considering that collectively we went over our allotted speaking time. (In too many of these meetings, “panel” equates to “speakers talking too long leaving audience little to no time for questions.” The ABA CLE was like this.) And this audience availed itself of every minute. Among the discussion threads we pursued were

• The state of knowledge of occupational practices as they relate to medical applications of nanotechnology [a natural for this audience]
• Whether control banding should be applied to nanomaterials and which form might be best
• How to get wayward academics to understand and enforce good occupational practices in their labs [lots of grumbling about the tyranny of the academic overlords (PhD faculty) who fail to appreciate the humble servants that are only trying to help them (EHS managers).]
• Whether biosafety protocols should be in place for labs working with nanomaterials. [Setting up a Level 1-4 type of containment system similar to that used by labs working with known or potential pathogens.]

This last question caught the three of us somewhat flat-footed. It is not a concept I have heard discussed in many other forums on nano-safety. I suppose EHS managers who deal with medical research think more about biosafety than many others in the nanotechnology community who have more of a chemical safety mindset. The question is whether the biosafety approach can be justified, and for which types of nano research. One obvious difference between current nanomaterials and, say, the Ebola virus, is that today’s nanomaterials are still largely the Phase 1 “passive” materials presented in Mike Roco’s much disseminated scheme. Until we progress to the later stages of nanotechnology we should not be overly concerned with nanoparticles multiplying.

Response to our session was very positive and I expect to hear from many of these people again as we all grapple with the occupational issues surrounding academic nanotechnology research. Plus, Janelia Farm is a very cool place to visit.