BY DR. TONY MYRES, OTTAWA
Nanotech is shaping up to be a major, fast-moving regulatory challenge that will have an impact not only on manufacturers and developers of products but on those who regulate professions and occupations that will use these nano-enhanced products.

Ever since the discovery of atoms scientists have always wanted to manipulate them. Nanotechnology takes that ability to a new plane using techniques that manipulate substances at the atomic and molecular level to make structures in the nanometer (nm) range (a billionth of a metre or 1/80,000 the width of a human hair).

Working at this scale allows scientists to “tune” material properties and make them behave in different ways to normal, large scale solids. For example, carbon in pencils is soft and malleable but at the nano scale can be as hard as steel. (more…)

Risk management recognizes that you need a “Plan B.” You can’t eliminate risk. With a good “Plan A” you can do your best to prevent something bad from happening. But not always.

A good Plan B mitigates the consequences when plan A fails. Plan B prepares for the inevitable, creating resilience to deal with the shock of a negative event.

This abstract concept was made very real to me this week. I was a passenger in a car that collided with a large deer on a remote section of a freeway. It was late Sunday night. The weather was good, the four lane highway was clear with an average amount of traffic. Suddenly, we saw a white flash as a deer jumped in front of our vehicle. There was no time for reaction. The crumpling of the hood seemed to happen in slow motion compared to the split-second between the time we saw the flash and felt the thud of the collision. (more…)

1. Identify key risks so that you can focus your limited resources on the risks that matter most

It’s the interplay of factors that differentiates risks. Breaking a rule or breaching a standard is just a starting point in determining risk. Going over the speed limit on the freeway is a standard that most of us break routinely. If this is the only risk factor, it’s not a very good indicator of risk. However, it’s a much more risky situation to be going over the speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic, failing to signal, and driving an unsafe car. This driver is reckless and can kill people. (more…)

Risk of Death in Canada : What We Know and How We Know It
by Simon P. Thomas (Author), Steve Hrudey (Author)
Paperback: 280 pages Publisher: The University of Alberta Press (Dec. 1, 1997)

Reviewed by Ron Truman, Regulatory Solutions Group

Actuaries can tell you how many Canadians are going to die next year; hit men can name a few names. But until recently, there’s been no middle ground — information that has a personal meaning for a wide variety of Canadians — about the risk of dying in the next 12 months.

University of Alberta environmental health sciences professor, Dr. Steve Hrudey, who led a study of 60 years of Canadian death data, can fill part of that gap.

(more…)