The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a
plan for nanotechnology, and it’s a good one. But can they afford it?
You have to hand it to NIOSH, this is an agency that actually seems to understand the word “strategy.” Unlike similar research documents coming from other organizations, NIOSH has a clear vision of the agency’s role in making nanotechnology work, and a well-defined set of goals that need to be achieved if this vision is to be realized. The agency even has a “logic model” underpinning the strategy, and detailed plans of how this model will be used.
Reading the beginning of the strategic plan, you might be forgiven for thinking you have picked up the business plan of a go-getting startup company. Terms like “vision,” “mission,” “customers,” “strategic goals” and “outcomes” pop out of the page in a way quite alien to many government research documents. And the result is a very clear appreciation of whom the agency is serving, what these “customers” are looking for, and how and when the organization is going to deliver the goods.
At the heart of the strategic plan are the goals—four strategic goals and 33 intermediate ones. These goals cover the big issues—discovering how nanomaterials may cause harm in the workplace; promoting healthy workplaces; enhancing global workplace safety through collaborations; and using nanotechnology solutions to make workplaces safer. But they also get down to brass tacks and address very specific issues: workplace fate of nanomaterials; exposure; predicting toxicity, determining appropriate dose metrics, surveillance; and so on.
And each intermediate goal comes with a clearly defined performance measure—a commitment by the agency to do something within a given timescale.
If NIOSH can deliver on this strategy, nanotech workplaces will be safer and businesses more certain of how to develop sustainable and economically viable products. But here’s the rub: customer satisfaction will cost some, and NIOSH ain’t rich!
Back in 2006, I estimated that
NIOSH needs in excess of $20 million per year dedicated to nanotechnology-risk research if US nanotechnology industries are to be built on safe workplaces. This estimate still stands. Yet current nano research funding within the agency is something less than $5 million per year, and this is,
in the words of director John Howard “using only internally redirected resources” that may need to be directed elsewhere in the future.
So here’s the dilemma: NIOSH has a great plan for underpinning the success of emerging nanotechnologies, but lacks the resources to put it into practice. I hate to be reduced to the level of crass cliché, but given the level of investment in nanotech research (
$7 billion by the US government since 2001) and the projected economic potential of the technology (an estimated $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods based on nanotechnology by 2014), thoughts of nails and kingdoms keep coming to mind. Perhaps it’s time to bite the bullet and make sure this agency has the relatively modest resources it needs to make nanotechnology succeed!