Europe, a big spender in a small world

US spends half as much as Europe on nanotech risk research.

According to a project group that helps ensure that as nanotechnologies advance, possible risks are minimised, European nations are spending almost twice as much as the US on research concerning the possible hazards of nanotechnology.

Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) is funded by the US government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) for the fiscal year 2006, where they found that only US$13 million was invested in projects mostly concerned with addressing possible risks from the technology in the US.

Nanotechnology risk

PEN Chief Science Advisor Andrew Maynard said: “It appears the US is guilty of wishful thinking in its assessment of research that will lead to the development of safe nanotechnologies. It is trying to substitute research that might inform science’s general understanding of possible nanotechnology risks for research that is focused on getting answers to direct questions being asked today - what makes a nanomaterial potentially harmful, how can it be used safely, and what happens when it is eventually disposed."

“Both the US government figure and the results of the PEN assessment show that less than three per cent of the $1.4 billion federal nanotechnology research budget was spent on environment, health and safety research.”

The PEN assessment and data is available at www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/ehs.

You’ve read it. Now review it.

Back to top

Back to top