IOM scientists short listed for Lloyds Science of Risk research prize
Congratulations to Dr. Karen Galea who was short listed and Craig Poland who came runner up at the first annual Lloyd's The Science of Risk Prize.
Craig Poland receives his prize
Lloyd's, in collaboration with the Lighthill Risk Network, have introduced the Science of Risk Prize to encourage the flow of information between academia and the insurance industry on how various risks will affect the insurance industry. Researchers were invited to submit peer-reviewed research papers, explaining why their research is relevant to the insurance industry, with the submissions being judged by a panel of leading academics and senior staff at Lloyd's.
Richard Ward, CEO, Lloyd's, remarked in the opening ceremony that the calibre of the 85 submissions was very high and the judging panel had a very difficult time identifying short listed papers and the eventual winners.
Dr. Galea's paper 'Trends in inhalation exposure: A review of the data in the published scientific literature' was short listed in the biological risks category. Her paper provides a key to help understand how the incidence of occupational disease might change in the future. In her paper data from the published literature on temporal changes in inhalation exposure was reviewed. In most instances, there were significant reductions in exposure, with annual reductions being broadly consistent for a range of hazardous substances. Our group has used the information in Dr. Galea's paper in combination with other sources to predict reducing incidence of occupational cancer over the next 30- 40 years and to argue that we could in the next 20 years essentially "eliminate" occupational cancer. Dr. Galea's team which looked at wider research on trends in inhalation exposure has also identified that industry must not become complacent and that exposures to some hazardous substances, for example flour dust which is a known occupational asthmagen, remain unchanged.
Craig's work focused on carbon nanotubes; a new form of engineered nanoparticle with tremendous properties making them ideally suited to incorporation into a number of products. Nanotechnology has been projected to be associated with $2.6 trillion of manufactured goods by 2014, reflecting in the financial gains that are to be had by exploiting nanotechnology to the full. However there have been several reports that have pointed towards the similarity of carbon nanotubes to another industrially relevant fibre, asbestos. The use of asbestos caused, and is still causing, an enormous burden of disease and the link between health effects and asbestos was followed by widespread litigation and acrimonious accusations of governments failing to protect their citizens. As such, any new product that looks like it might act like asbestos in terms of its effects following inhalation needs careful scrutiny and regulatory agencies and toxicologists are vigilant for any such materials.
Our research, published in 2008 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology was the first to properly investigate the link between carbon nanotubes and asbestos by examining the attributes important to fibre pathogenicity (i.e. fibre length) using suitable asbestos controls. Our results showed that certain forms of carbon nanotubes which had a combination of properties known to make asbestos harmful were indeed as potentially harmful as asbestos. Critically, some forms of carbon nanotube did not have the features that make asbestos harmful (for example the fibres were too short) paving the way for the possibility of 'safety by design'.
The article has become highly cited and featured in numerous prominent reports into the safe use of nanotechnology including the American National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) 'Approaches to safe nanotechnology' report and the UK Governments UK 'Nanotechnologies Strategy'. Most telling perhaps was the production of a guidance document on the risk management of carbon nanotubes by the HSE (http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/web38.pdf) soon after publication, where the paper was included as its only citation.
Craig works within the IOM's SAFENANO section - a multi-disciplinary group which provides information and scientific services on the safe use, exposure assessment & control, toxicology and regulatory aspects of nanomaterials.
Karen and Craig presented their work at the award ceremony held at Lloyd's, London. This was attended by around 100 delegates including leading academics, decision makers and managers in the insurance industry and regulators.
For further information on the Science of Risk prize see: