05.02.2010

Public Perception of Nano Risks Shifting? FramingNano Governance Platform Proposing How to Include Public Concerns

A study in the January 2010 Journal of Nanoparticle Research reports that there are indications that public perceptions of nanotechnology risks might be shifting away from health and environmental concerns towards more societal ones. The authors of the paper also observe that the public's opinion seems to diverge from the one of experts in the nanotechnology field. The propsed FramingNano Governance Platform which will be presented and discussed with all interested stakeholders in a number of national workshops, offers a unique opportunity to integrate the diverging opinions and channel them into the decision making processes.

The article presents early results from an opinion formation study based on a 76-member panel of U.S. citizens, with comparison data from a group of 177 nanotechnology experts [1].

The authors report that the citizen's panel perceptions of risks and benefits of nanotechnologies were initially similar to those of the experts, but then started to be more concerned about a variety of what we term ‘‘societal risks’’ that nanotechnology might present, e.g. economic, distributional, and privacy issues, and that health or environmental risks faded into the background.

"In otherwise democratic societies, policy that ignores the full range of public concerns or avoids responding to public input risks the potential public rejection of an entire class of technology [...]" [1]

In conclusion, the authors say that this data "suggest that responding to public concerns may involve more than attention to physical risks in areas such as health and environment", and that concerns about other forms of societal risks would appear increasingly salient.

"When we discuss risks and associated ethical considerations within the expert community, we most commonly think in terms of physical hazards [...] . Our regulatory system is beginning to respond to these risks for nanotechnology, despite great challenges and uncertainties. However, we do very little to address other perceived societal concerns, such as erosion of privacy or economic impacts. Public discussion of nanotechnology (and, for that matter, all technology) should expand to consider broader social impacts by using an ‘‘expanded vocabulary of risk’’ that helps legitimize these concerns." [1]

The FramingNano Governance Platform, a concept of nanotechnology governance that has been developed during the last two years by a multinational consortium under European FP7 funding, offers an opportunity to put such approach into practice and to meaningfully include citizens concerns, values and opinions in nanotechnology governance.

The FramingNano Governance Platform will be presented to the interested public and all stakeholders during the next few months in a series of national workshops in several European countries.

The Innovation Society as the Swiss partner of the project consortium would like to invite all interested parties to the Swiss National FramingNano event on March 18th in the Stade de Suisse in Bern, to present the FramingNano Governance Platform, have a look at the European strategy in nanotechnology governance and discuss possible ways of implementing such approach in the national context.

A detailed programme of the Swiss National FramingNano Conference can be found here. More details on the Swiss National FramingNano Conference and the link to the online registration can be found here.

FramingNano FP7 research project: www.framingnano.eu

[1] J. Nanoprart Res. Article: Susanna Priest, Ted Greenhalgh, Victoria Kramer (2010). Risk perceptions starting to shift? U.S. citizens are forming opinions about nanotechnology.