Image: Matt Collins
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
A decade ago the great worry about nanotechnology was that it could quite literally destroy the planet. As Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy warned in his essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” self-assembling nanobots could potentially spread out of our control (Mis-)programmed to replicate ad infinitum, these subsentient bots would spread across the landscape as a gray goo of devastation, consuming the earth and every unlucky creature who called it home.
Nowadays we can only wish that our planet-dooming scenarios were so far-fetched. Our existential worries revolve around the all too immediate problems of global warming and disease, and nanotechnology—incorporated into improved solar panels, wind turbines or drug delivery mechanisms—could, if anything, emerge as an important tool to fight these threats.
Yet like any new technology, nanomaterials carry with them potential both for good and for harm. The most salient worries concern not a gray goo apocalypse but rather the more prosaic and likely possibility that some of these novel materials may turn out to be hazardous to our health or the environment. Because ordinary materials display unique properties at the nanoscale, the nanometer-size bits of a seemingly benign material might turn out to be noxious. As John D. Young and Jan Martel report in “The Rise and Fall of Nanobacteria,” even naturally occurring nanoparticulates can have an deleterious effect on the human body. If natural nanoparticulates can harm us, we would be wise to carefully consider the possible actions of engineered nanomaterials. The size of nanoparticles also means that they can more readily escape into the environment and infiltrate deep into internal organs such as the lungs and liver. Adding to the concern, each nanomaterial is unique. Although researchers have conducted a number of studies on the health risks of individual materials, this scattershot approach cannot provide a comprehensive picture of the hazards—quantitative data on what materials, in what concentrations, affect the body over what timescales.
In response to this uncertainty, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a grand research strategy to study the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials, a welcome step that many have been advocating for years. We hope that the program will help build a robust database that will give policy makers and the public the facts needed to understand the possible health risks that specific nanomaterials might create. And although it would be unwise to rush careful research efforts, speed is paramount. According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, more than 1,000 consumer products containing nanomaterials are available in the U.S., a number that is quickly growing.
We also emphasize speed because of the EPA’s alarming recent history with a similar research program. In 1996 Congress directed the EPA to conduct a comprehensive screening program for endocrine disruptors in the environment. These chemicals interfere with the body’s hormonal system and can lead to abnormal development of the sex organs, infertility and cancer. Although the U.S. has banned the production of known endocrine disruptors such as PCBs and DDT, other common chemicals—most notably bisphenol A (BPA) and some pesticides—may also affect the body’s endocrine system.
Even for a government agency, the EPA’s response to the congressional directive was woefully indolent. Instead of quickly beginning to study the thousands of suspected endocrine disruptors that may exist in the nation’s drinking water, the EPA spent the next decade building a labyrinth of committees and subcommittees to evaluate what materials might be worthy of study and the methodologies that should be used to study them. By 2002—six years after the program began—the EPA got so far as to devise the selection process it planned to use to choose the first 50 to 100 chemicals that would eventually be subject to analysis. In 2007 the agency published a draft list of those chemicals. In April 2009 it finalized the list. And triumphantly, in late October, 13 years after the program began, the EPA announced that it would begin research.
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add CommentIt is pretty sad when fear of litigation is the only protection people have against new untested potentially hazardous products....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe EPA really needs to step up its game!
To the extent that the envisioned problems are real (so difficult to assess), the U.S. EPA has absolutely no control over the rest of the world, even if it could manage to control U.S. production of harmful nanotech, which seems highly unlikely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe EPA is responsible for massive production of Carbon nanomaterials. Since 1979 palladium catalytic converters have produced carbon nanomaterials and expelled them directly into the air from every new spark ignition car sold in the United States because of EPA mandated installation of palladium catalytic converters in these vehicles. Palladium catalytic produced carbon nano-particles and carbon combustion residue particle nano-shards (CCRPNS) are produced by the catalytic cracking of larger engine exhaust fuel cenosphere particulate matter PM10 to PM2.5 into 100 times more PM0.99 to PM0.005 particles of carbon nanomaterials.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCatalytic converters are the means used to produce the new high-tech carbon nanomaterials like the carbon nanotubes and buckyballs used to make the question mark for this article.
I suffer from atherosclerosis , Lymphatic-sarcoid disease, and lung sarcoidosis triggered by the pollution product of palladium catalytic converters.
I fear that Official Messengers have already delivered us the wormwood of the palladium catalyst but they were from the Government, the EPA, not from God.
Now, The fox is in charge of the hen house!
where is the evidence for such an argument?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJournal of Aerosol Science
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoi:10.1016/S0021-8502(97)10037-4
Engines and nanoparticles: a review
Measuring Fine, Ultrafine, and Nanoparticle Emissions from Engines
Engine and Emissions Research Department at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)
Combustion and Flame
doi:10.1016/j.combustflame.2009.01.022
Study of carbonaceous nanoparticles in premixed C2H4–air flames and behind a spark ignition engine
Measurement of Engine Exhaust Particle Size
David B. Kittelson (this is from presentation on the 1st citation in case you are not a member or do not want to pay)
Center for Diesel Research University of Minnesota
presented at University of California, Davis 17 February 2000
Concentration and Size Distribution of Ultrafine Particles
Near a Major Highway
Yifang Zhu and William C. Hinds
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles
Seongheon Kim and Constantinos Sioutas
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Environmental Aerosol Physics
dr. Lidia Morawska
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
EPA and CAARB should be the ones who have to provide the evidence that they "first do no harm".
yea typical government inaction on a viatal issue,whit regards to your article on titanium as a possible caracergen i would just like to piont out any one thinking of tattoos should bear in mind that the white pigment is titaniumand may be present in other coulours too i used to mix some white in most of my coulour as it made them stand out more consult your tattooist if you have any doubts,better safe than sorry.regards the motorcycle messiah,leader of the junkies against crime
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this