Regulation? Not in Wisconsin
Even before Scott Walker was elected governor of Wisconsin, the legislature’s Special Committee on Nanotechnology showed little interest in examining the risks associated with nanoparticles.
One of the committee’s original charges was to “examine the human health and environmental concerns related to the manufacture, use, and disposal of nanomaterials….” After a few meetings, the committee decided they needed to create “an entity to promote the development of nanotechnology in this state….”
Tom Still, director of the Wisconsin Technology Network, can take some of the credit for the change.
Still solicited a letter from a UW-Madison communications researcher, Dietram Scheufele, who warned that “Unilateral regulations (at the state or local level) carry a serious risk of having Wisconsin fall even further behind other neighboring states, with potentially detrimental effects to the state economy.”
California is acting to regulate nanomaterials. Although Scheufele criticizes regulations as being harmful to business, he continues to refer to the state as a leading center for nanotechnology.
At the fourth meeting of the committee on Dec. 6, 2010, there was scarcely any mention of risks, even though Representative Terese Berceau, who suggested the committee at Powell’s behest, warned that “the science is still developing. I don’t want to find out five or 10 years from now that we are doing something damaging.”
Berceau said she had worked with Still and the University of Wisconsin to provide incentives to learn more of the health risks, including helping manufacturers “in a positive way” to protect worker safety.
“I feel I was stabbed in the back by Tom Still,” Berceau said. “Still seemed to be very enthusiastic about the idea. It’s unfortunate that he wrote that I’m trying to make nanotechnology the enemy.”
Still said he couldn’t comment on Berceau’s remarks until he listened to the tape of the meeting.
Other committee members quickly discounted the potential risks as unproved and a federal responsibility.
Powell, who attended the meetings as an observer, was disappointed but not surprised that the effort had become “basically a Nanotechnology Promotion Act.”
The committee hasn’t yet made its final recommendations (its final meeting is March 2), but Powell doesn’t anticipate any support for a registry, which she said would be useful for first responders (the UW’s nanotech Web site briefly featured carbon nanotubes burning in a microwave.), tracking substances proven to be harmful and identifying firms with similar interests.
“The special committee is heavily weighted with nano business/research interests,” Powell wrote in a Dec. 1, 2010, letter to the committee. “The purportedly ‘public’ members of the committee include several nano business owners, a university patent lawyer, three university researcher involved in nanotechnology (including one who makes nanomaterials and has a nanocompany.”
The committee favored creation of an “information hub” at the University of Wisconsin to compile and assess information and advise nanotech industries.
But Powell said dozens of web sites and organization already compile such information. Access to information isn’t the problem, she said. It’s extremely difficult to review the research involving nanotechnology and provide useful advice, particularly since the characteristics and risks of nanomaterials vary widely
Powell and several members of her nano group were the only members of the public to attend the hearing on Dec 6. The morning session concluded without anyone on the committee referring to her concerns or experience with the issue, even though she had provided the committee with detailed information and comments. (They did ask her a few questions later in the afternoon, however).
The committee accepted the letter from the UW communications researcher as the final word on the topic. .
Scheufele has been appointed to a raft of professional and academic committees and organizations concerned with nanotechnology. He has no research credentials in nanotechnology, medicine or risk assessment.
Moreover, he failed to mention some of his other findings, – namely, that scientists involved with nanotechnology are more optimistic than the general public about the possible benefits of nanotechnology but are also more concerned than the about the potential pollution and health risks associated with the new technology.
Scheufele ignored several requests to provide detailed information about those interviewed for the survey he cited.
In a column critical of the committee’s efforts, Still referred to research showing that liberals were more likely than conservatives to favor regulation “beyond the federal level.”
