Who should regulate nanotechnology?

Filed in archive Government on December 27, 2005

With the new possibilities that nanotechnology brings come new challenges like regulation and oversight. Currently, no single agency is responsible for regulating nanotech development or approving nanotech products, and given nanotech' s diversity of applications it' s unlikely any single agency ever will have sole authority over it. Some experts call for a new agency to oversee nanotech the way the federal Food and Drug Administration controls the introduction of new products in its realm, while others see it regulated by existing agencies like the FDA or EPA. Still others believe nanotech' s breadth of applications will require cooperation between multiple agencies and governments.

Mark Greenwood, a former senior EPA toxicology official, now a partner in a Washington, DC, law firm specializing in environmental law, said in a recent article in the Nanotech section of MIT' s online Technology Review he believes the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, which is charged with administering the Toxic Substances Control Act, is likely to be regulating nanotechnology. But, he warns, " I don' t think that the current program is capable of dealing with the complexity, the variety, and the data needs of nanotechnology, unless they get a big infusion of resources. "

Vicki Colvin, director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University, suggests in another Technology Review article that the FDA might be the right agency to regulate nanotech. But she concurs that, " the one thing everybody agrees on is that there just is not a lot of information out there. The sooner we can get technical information in hand, the better. " But she concedes the technical information will not arrive soon enough for the public to make perfectly informed decisions. " If it were a perfect world, " she concludes, " we wouldn't think about this topic for 10 years. And then all the data would be there, and we would make a good decision. But the fact of the matter is that society will be forced to make a decision in the absence of data. "