Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Health & Safety”
Reading reports of government plans for the regulation of nanotechnology sometimes feels like being on death row. The outcome is inevitable, and all you can do is hope that it will be short and painless. The European Commission has been debating regulations for the best part of a decade,and now apparently has been given a deadline of 2011 by the …
Ever since someone choked a mouse with carbon nanotubes in an attempt to prove their toxicity, people have been running round giving huge doses of nanomaterials to everything from bacteria to fish. Of course the huge doses involved, far in excess of anything that would be encountered in the real world, could be equally well used to prove that bananas …
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are an odd and under worked bunch. In order to fill their time they built a second parliament building in Brussels and spend every fourth week shuttling between Brussels and Strasbourg while submitting expense claims. The Devil makes work for idle hands, and according to Chemistry World the latest scheme from Brussels is to …
Some poor science (or at least poor science reporting) from Denmark where Otto Melchior Poulsen of the National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NFA) claims that “We can, on a scientific basis, draw a parallel between the nano boom and the asbestos scandal.” The scientific basis seems to be “that test animals used for research in his institute on …
Canada has become the latest country following the UK and Australia to ban nanotechnology in organic food. Dag Falck, organic program manager at Nature’s Path Foods explains: “Genetic engineering is a definable science: splicing genes into crops. With nanotechnology there are at least 1000 different applications, all unregulated with unknown risks.” As the Canadian organic folks don’t seem to have got …
As an adjunct to my previous post, Science today reports on a new report from the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies (The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States) which seems to conclude that biotech crops are good for farmers and the environment, with the usual caveats and uncertainties of course. So fourteen …
The ongoing spat between a journalist determined to prove nanotech is dangerous and the Nation Nanotechnology Coodination Office tells us a lot about how science is perceived, and about ourselves. The problem is that, as a journalist, you are far more likely to get a story published which alerts people to some kind of hidden danger, preferably as a result …
An interesting piece of work from Þröstur Þorsteinsson at the Nordic Volcanological centre looks at the particle size distribution from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption. Thorvaldur Thordarson quoted in The Economist explains Ash particles are normally in the 50-100 micron (0.05 to 0.1 millimetre) range. But at a site 50km east of the eruption, 24% of the ash falling to the ground …
Since the UK’s new nanotechnology strategy was launched I have been either having a crash course in regenerative medicine or getting over a cold. In the meantime, my colleagues Andrew Maynard and Dexter Johnson have both taken a long hard look at the ‘strategy’ and found it wanting. No, I’m being kind, the general consensus is that it is total …
There’s nothing like the mention of Geoengineering to get environmental groups even madder than putting a wasps nest down their trousers and beating them with a cricket bat, and for good reason. The idea that we could do something about climate change that didn’t involve re-engineering the political system would mean that we don’t have to live in caves, grow …