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Experts concerned over Nanotech's impact
Experts have expressed concerns over the threat the technology poses to environment and health of human beings.
Nanotechnology might be hailed by investors in the US as the next big thing, but experts have expressed concerns over the threat the technology poses to environment and health of human beings.
"Americans are investing more money, publishing more scientific papers and winning more patents than anyone else in the quickly growing field of nanotechnology, however, important questions about the technology's safety and oversight remain unanswered and under-studied," a federal report on the science of things only a few hundred millionth of an inch in size says.
Research on the health effects of nanomaterials -- and necessary revisions in the way they are regulated -- are lagging even as novel materials find their way into an ever-widening spectrum of products, including clothing, cosmetics and computer hard drives, The Washington Post reports quoting government officials.
The toxicity studies now underway are "a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done," says John H Marburger III, science adviser to President Bush and chief of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Nanotechnology, which deals with materials and devices manufactured on the scale of billionths of a meter, is widely touted as the engine of the next industrial revolution.
The promise is not so much its ability to produce ever smaller and more efficient machines -- although that is certainly one aspect of its attraction.
The main benefit of gaining control over such tiny bits of matter is that ordinary materials behave in extraordinary ways when shaved down to the scale of atoms and molecules.
The report notes that the extreme chemical reactivity of nanomaterials makes them potentially toxic. The threat to consumers seems modest, it concludes, but may be significant for factory workers exposed to nanodust.
To date, however, federal regulations limiting exposures do not differentiate between bulk quantities of chemicals and their potentially much more toxic nanoparticulate forms.
"Existing rules for exposure to bulk substances don't apply" and will need to be changed, Marburger says. One of the things holding that up, he adds, is the need to work out an internationally agreed upon naming system for the new materials so that everyone will be talking the same chemical and regulatory language.
Even if nanomaterials are relatively safe while embedded in larger products, it will be important to find out how they will affect the environment and human health after those products wear out, says David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, which is studying the issue with Yale University scientists.
"Who knows what happens when you grind this stuff up, incinerate it or it goes into a landfill?" Rejeski asks.
"These products may be safe in the tennis racket, but all products become obsolete at some point" -- if nothing else because they go out of fashion.
