Feedback from Robert Tanguay

Oregon State University

Posted on: March 23, 2007

I will continue, site crashed before I finished.

The risk in evaluating potential adverse interactions between nano materials and biological systems only from high use materials is that there is the potential to miss highly toxic materials.

I understand the committee’s decision to not recommend expensive testing systems, however, I believe much can be learned from the chemical testing world. There are ways to streamline the testing and to take advantage of powerful new model systems to rationally define nanomaterial/biological interactions.

I do think the focus should be, as the framework states, information intensive. I believe we should really focus on developing a suite of inexpensive, rapid and relevant testing strategies. There are many benefits of this approach. First, with more credibility, we can articulate that the industry as a whole is taking EH@S issues seriously. But more importantly, these data will provide a rich amount of new information that can be used to tune nano materials synthesis to maximize properties and minimize risk. Infect the biological testing may reveal new applications for these materials. Again I understand the reluctance to follow the traditional path of chemical testing, as it is slow expensive and arguably not particularly predictive. My point is that we can do a better based on the mistakes and successes of the chemical testing community.

Again I want to reiterate the committee did a terrific job of putting this framework together, and it will be an important platform to rationally move this field forward.