Dispatches from the Nanotechnology Frontier
Reports coming from the ISO nanotechnology standards meeting in Seattle
Addressing the Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) issues surrounding nanotechnology has become critical for the future development of nanotechnologies across a number of application fields.
But in order to address these issues it is necessary to set standards for nomenclature, experimentation and microscopy, just to name a few.
This week out in Seattle, WA, a meeting of the ISO TC 229 (nanotechnologies) groupis on going and its aim is to establish standards in these areas.
This ISO group is nothing new, it's been around a while. So to be honest, I am not sure where this meeting stands in its progress towards developing standards.
But we do have a new insight into the process as Skip Rung, President and Executive Director of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), is sending back dispatches from the meetings to Nanotech-Now.
Based on his first dispatch I expect that it will be some time before we have anything approaching a comprehensive set of standards for nanotechnologies. But I'll be reading the posts, just in case.
Dexter Johnson is a contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum, with a focus on nanotechnology.
