Even More Cooperation is Needed in Nanotoxicology Research

I just saw the latest press release from the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) based at Rice University.

The announcement details the publishing of findings from two workshops held in January and June of 2007. The press release contains realistic comments from Dr. Vicki Colvin, executive director of ICON and professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at Rice University, that will likely send shivers up the spines of outraged environmental activists such as, â''Our â''grand challengeâ'' â'' producing computational models that predict interactions of engineered nanoparticles with organisms â'' will take some time, perhaps 10 years.â''

But the press release is also peppered with terms like: international workshops, unprecedented international collaboration, the diversity of participants, and international scope.

I have gone through the site to see the list of the 70 representatives to get a sense of this international scope, and I couldnâ''t seem to navigate to it. The best I could find was the Steering Committee.

From this list I could see they tried to hit upon the major targets, albeit it from a slightly more US-centric perspective than all the â''internationalâ'' talk may lead you to believe.

Although the â''Linksâ'' page brings you to all the other international working groups looking at the toxicology of nanoparticles, it isnâ''t clear to me, at least through the website, what sort of cooperative arrangements they have with these other groups.

While it is good to see that everyone is trying to take some role in tackling this issue, it would be preferable to see an even higher level of cooperation and coordination among all these groups. Just off the top of my head, I know there is Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the American Society for Testing and Materials International (ASTM International) all trying to be universal and comprehensive in their approach to figuring out the EHS issues of nanoparticles.

This seems all a bit fragmented to me. Maybe someone can enlighten me on how all these groups are working in coordinated fashion and there is no unnecessary overalap in their work, so that we can arrive at some more conclusive data on the toxicology of nanoparticles.