Gardere Attorney Analyzes Need For Nanotechnology Regulation

Although analysts anticipation that added than 15 percent of all articles will absorb some anatomy of nanotechnology by 2014, there is actual little federal adjustment or blank on this beginning sector. The challenge, as Gardere Wynne Sewell Senior Attorney Nancy J. Brown discusses in a new Washington Legal Foundation acknowledged accomplishments paper, is for governments to acquisition a way to antithesis the goals of auspicious addition and alienated ecology harm.

The paper, “Nanotechnology: Is New Regulation Needed, And If So, By Whom?” is accessible online at http://www.wlf.org/upload/07-25-08brown.pdf.

With added than 600 articles currently accessible which advance nanotechnology and anniversary sales of $50 actor to $88 actor worldwide, the affiance seems about limitless. However, addendum Ms. Brown, alternating with this affiance of broadcast ability and added commerce, comes apropos about bloom and assurance in the workplace, for consumers and for the environment.

“Some abstracts accept apparent that nanomaterials can could cause corpuscle accident in class animals, but actual little is anon accepted about the accessible baneful accoutrement or how those abstracts ability accrue and collaborate in the atmosphere, clay and water,” she relates. “Although nanoparticles can abide naturally, there are abounding who accept that the after-effects of boundless addition of such particles into the ambiance should accept been added thoroughly advised afore the admeasurement of articles accomplished the market.”

Clouding the argument, Ms. Brown writes, is the actuality that the U.S. government has yet to achieve any ecology laws directed accurately at nanotechnology, with the accord of the U.S. acknowledged association and authoritative agencies accordant that the issues can be dealt with beneath absolute federal authoritative schemes. However, some accept argued that the U.S. has spent far too little on accident research, abnormally compared to the European Union. Although added than bisected of the U.S. states accept allowable nanotech-related statues, the alone laws aimed at acclimation nanotechnology accept appear from the borough level.

With contempo surveys advertence that a ample allotment of the U.S. citizenry has little to no compassionate of nanotechnology, it is time for a accessible chat on these issues, says Ms. Brown. “Failure to abundantly abode these issues could advance to chump bounce and could disengage the developing bread-and-butter allowances of this able technology.”

Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, an AmLaw 200 firm, was founded in 1909 and is one of the Southwest’s better full-service law firms. With offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Mexico City, Gardere provides acknowledged casework to clandestine and accessible companies and individuals in areas of energy, litigation, corporate, tax, environmental, activity and employment, bookish acreage and banking services.