RE: Environmental Defense - DuPont Nano Risk Framework - RECOMMENDED

Environmental Defense - DuPont Nano Risk Framework, February 26, 2007 - Draft - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/19/26/38173388.pdf

First, this project is in its draft stage, so I am sure it will improve. Terry and Scott are friends of mine and this was a lot of work. Generally, I applaud the effort though at times I found some of the material self-evident. Nonetheless, it was a major work on organizing and refiling concepts in a more user-friendly way.

Second, I have organized my recommendations and criticisms into two major categories.

Category 1 - Risk Communication. On p. 4, there is a claim that the Framework (F1.0) "can ... facilitate public acceptance." There is no reason to believe this is true at all. The assumption the public will react favorably to better packaged data and more data is simply not validated by experience or by social science research. On the other hand, if F1.0 is marketed as a public relations tool, then there is better likelihood of success though I doubt that was the intention of the authors. I sense public stakeholders would prefer not to be convinced nanoEHS has been addressed by industry and regulatory stakeholders on the basis of a term with assumed positive valence, such as "Nano Risk Framework." I am NOT suggesting the public does not want information, they just a not necessarily swayed by risk assessments based on a supply of scientific data, much of which is inconclusive and some of which is contradictory.

As I said recently at a DC briefing: "Leave risk communication to the specialists" because every time scientists and lawyers get involved they are convinced that communication of this nature is a secondary skill set which came with their advanced degrees. And they are WRONG. That's why we have crisis communication experts!

Category 2 - Mine fields.

There are a few, they include the following four: "worst case assumptions", CBI, consumer use and misuse, and waste management.

(A) worse case assumptions:

(1) Are we talking about "worst" or "worse"? "Worst" is relatively easy. "Worse" is not. The comparative concept is a judgment call and since participants in that decision making will come
of the process with their own motives (some of which are self-preserving). They include: actual or perceived self-interest, role definitions, role conflicts, actual or perceived threats to self-esteem, conflicts in value hierarchies, jurisdictional concerns, and perversity. These are the reasons we live in a world with evil and they will surface during the process of deciding why "worse" should not be "worst". There is a rich literature in scenario building the authors may need to examine for guidance here.

(2) "Worse" does not mean the data sets we build will address the issues at hand. Often exaggerated scenarios address phenomena that are not associated with the case instant. We could find ourselves learning a lot about nanoparticles which turn out to be irrelevant and since we live in a zero-sum EHS world (meaning there are limited researchers and resources), this becomes especially problematic.

(B) confidential business information (CBI) p. 65:

(1) This is a conundrum for risk management regulation and public risk communication. Much of the value in applied nanoscience has less to do with what is made and more to do with how it is made. The processes are patented and serve as the basis for much of the intellectual property of a company. As such, CBI will always be a feature of nanotechnology risk management and is the bugaboo of the process.

(2) The public assumes that industrial/business researchers are less trustworthy. In addition, they believe industry/business has research which is confidential. In many (if not most) occasions, they assume this research is negative in nature and being held confidentially to prevent regulation and public boycott. Finally, partial transparency may simply be more of a problem than outright opacity.

(C) consumer use and misuse: This concept surfaces when I was writing my book and I included a passage on off-terrain vehicles and how no one know they would end up on city streets so designers ignored the associated implications. Put simply, there is very little constraints when it comes of consumer misuse. Children huff cleaning products. Automobiles in demolition derbies. Toilet page rolls when no bong is available. You get it!

(D) waste management: This issue arose in the ICON "Best Practices" report in which some respondents referred their waste the third parties. What is this industry? Who are they? What are they doing? I can see an entire industry dedicated to dealing with the waste stream of the nanoworld that treat the waste like bulk waste when more care might be justified. F1.0 cannot allow the producers to assign responsibility for the end-state to a third party.

Down in an earlier blog, I complained about the entire concept of life cycle assessment and refer you to the post from April 2. (I am working on a much longer piece about this subject).