Nanosmile website on nanosafety training, Education and public dialogue issues

This paper deals with communication strategy on emerging risk situations. The lessons learnt from the French National Debate on nanotechnolgy highlight Nanosmile options taken in order to support public dialogue. Users feed back is discussed, then Nanosmile perspectives are presented.

I. Introduction

The nanoparticles are finding new industrial applications every day in fields as various as electronics, biomedicine, pharmaceutics, chemical catalysis, new materials, cosmetology and others. Economists are now speaking about the dawn of a new industry for the 21st century that could rank with the automobile and microelectronics industries. Nevertheless, this new industry will only be dynamically developed if two critical conditions are met.