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Nanotechnology: Nanoscale Particles A Health Hazard?
securitas writes "Before you start dreaming of all the benefits nanotechnology will bring you, think about the health hazards. Over two dozen studies that date back to 1984 indicate that nanoscale materials are toxic because their size allows them to be easily ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Proponents of nanotech dismiss the meta-study as nonsense, while the authors suggest a moratorium on nanotech development until further health research is completed." The paper (726 kB PDF) that prompted this article is available.
Just imagine the ill-effects of a bug in their programming!
I would say that, on the whole, nanoparticle cookie cutters sound extremely bad for your health.
Just ask Jack Putter how dangerous nanoscale particles can be!
we were suposed to inhale/ingest nano machines. thats how they get in our bodies to help us.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
Maybe there's a future for Nanoscale Particles in home gardening and pest control, too? ;-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I feel like there are these other things that we are inhaling all the time that have variants that are both good and bad....
what are they called... something with a V and another with a B...
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
(full article:)
Research Shows Hazards in Tiny Particles By BARNABY J. FEDER
A new review of research on nanoscale materials suggests that tiny particles are often toxic because of their size and are likely to pose health hazards, especially to workers making them.
Dr. Vyvyan Howard, a pathology specialist at the University of Liverpool who examined results from 27 studies published since 1984, said that the type of material a particle is made of appears to be much less related to how hazardous it is than its size at such small scales.
Dr. Howard said that nanoscale particles, which are made up of tens to thousands of molecules and are far smaller than human cells, are easily ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin.
"I suppose that's something those working in the field would rather not hear but that's no reason not to say it," Dr. Howard said.
Dr. Howard's conclusions are to be released today by the ETC Group, an opponent of rapid nanotechnology development that asked him to perform the research review. ETC has been advocating, among other things, that production of nanotechnology products be put on hold until more data is available on potential health impacts. The report is available at www.etcgroup.org.
Nanoscale materials are already used in products as diverse as sun-blocking lotions, tennis balls, computer displays and paneling on cars. The range of potential applications has been expanding rapidly as researchers discover valuable and sometimes unexpected results by shrinking common materials, including extra strength and flexibility, new electrical properties and transparency.
Nanotechnology backers and researchers in the United States and Europe have repeatedly disagreed with the kinds of conclusions reached by Dr. Howard and there is no public support in the business community for any sort of moratorium.
"People who worry excessively underestimate the number of natural materials that size that have surrounded us for years," said Greg Blonder, a partner in the Morgenthaler venture capital firm. "It requires the usual good care but I don't see any new or unique threat."
Nanotechnology companies said that the havoc that asbestos claims have created in industry has made businesses extremely sensitive to the health impact of new materials. Halting development to perform health studies would simply send nanotechnology development offshore, they said.
It's not as if this were being put out by a group which, oh, say, was interested in opposing the rapid development of Nanotech...
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
The file looks much smaller than 726kb.. Did I lose the other half?
This remind me of an episode of the Twilight Zone where someone was injected with clever nanobots and they actually started improving the person by putting eyes in the back of his head etc. They ended up advancing him so far that he was shunned by society and try to kill himself but found out that the nanobots would fix whatever he did
:)
i.e. cut his writes they would heal it straight away
As he become good as immortal it was implied that he lived forever. Now that can't be good. Having to watch daytime TV for the next 1000 years
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Life imitating art...in a bad way.
Don't be taking away my grey goo!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Bring on the toner wars
inhalation of experimental compounds discovered harmful!
;-)
Seriously, rule number one of any lab is "don't sniff that stuff" followed by "don't eat it or rub it on yourself, either."
"Don't give research grants to study dangerous nanotechnology, give the grants to me and I will conduct a study into why many more health studies are required to determine the risk."
Stop all research, bleh. Nano stuff isn't dangerous like gen-enged germs (unless you believe in the grey goo catastrophe), it is dangerous like many other fine particles, like asbestos and such. It warrants careful handling, not banning.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Why every time something new comes out, there are people who propose halting it until the most fantastic claims are investigated. If this sort of stop-now/ask-questions-forever approach becomes law, it'll bog down all R&D for all time, and ruin the world economy simultaneously.
This just means that appropriate care must be taken as when dealing with other tiny organic machines such as bacteria and viruses.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Don't we just injest more that will go into the lungs, pull out the bad stuff, and drop it into our stomach for elimination?
so, if they cut his reads would they finish the sentence for him?
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
In Neil Stephenson's great nanotech novel The Diamond Age, the diseases caused by the spread of nano-agents in the atmosphere caused a major public health problem, with a widespread epidemic of life-threatening asthma caused by inhalation of the agents.
Everything possible to be believ'd is an Image of Truth - Wm. Blake
just ask Scully and Mulder... the Kryczek guy is the culprit!
Just look at what all the nano-nicotine and nano-tar they put in cigarettes does to people.
Trolling is a art,
Since when have we EVER stopped research in a scientific field to check out health concerns first?
Give me a break...
For the record, I think we need to have a clear understanding of the basics in any specific field before we can even think about doing research on environmental and health issues. Imagine trying to determine the effect of internal combustion engine on the environment before you've actually built one. Kinda hard, no?
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Look, merely because all of the potential positive effects of nanotechnology are being extolled by supporters doesn't mean that micro scale objects pose no health threats. Considering the emphasis that the EPA and environmental organizations are putting on the health hazards of particulate matter, it's a good idea to examine the potential problems here. Some might argue that nanotech particles would be too small to pose a significant threat, but something that small could easily work it's way into structures in the human body previously accessible only by other types of cells. I don't know about you, but I shudder to think of the potential damage that could be done to the air sacs in lungs just from breathing in "clouds" of these structures, even if benign. I'm not saying that nanotech is bad; just that thinking of it as totally benign is foolish.
If the materials from Nanobots are harmfull, make Nanobots that will seek out this harmfull material that are hypoalergenic to clean up and remove the bad stuff
Problem solved!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
you silly little sack of bitchtits.....karma whoring little bitch....
FUCK OFF AND DIE
Look at us! Time was when visionaries would explore the boundries of biology, chemistry and physics and deal with the consequences later. How can we progress if we are constantly pausing to deal with the fallout from our research rather than pushing forward.
Just look at cloning. There are a million legitemate reasons to continue the research into cloning organs and animals, but people want them to stop because it could pose some moral dilemas.
Why is it that people always hear what I say, and not what I mean?
Also, it wasn't pubilshed in a peer-reviewed forum - generally a good indication of poor science.
Quack!Quack!.....QUACK!!
This remind me of an episode of the Twilight Zone..
Sorry, it was an episode of "The Outer Limits".
I wonder if they included this book in the meta-study...
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Assuming that this would even be possible, why not just built nanobots that you could then inject into a person that would seek out and destroy any nanomaterials that the human had ingested, inhaled, etc. Imagine a nanobot seeking out and destroying asbestos in the lungs.
If you're worried about nanobots staying inside the body, then enable them to destroy themselves given a signal. You could even create symbiotic nanobots to destroy any other nanobots that enter your body. The possibilities seem endless when you use your imagination.
How do they know it's not just miniaturized Chinese?
If anything we need to do more nanotech research because of this. We need the nano-cure for our nano-poisoning, post haste!
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Most anti-perspirants, afaik, work by clogging the pores with zinc. So this is a fairly straightforward premise. If you have something, anything, that is small enough to be taken in directly through the skin, it's a problem.
People pooh-poohing this study reeks of similiarty with the cigarette industry of the 50's.
My
Limekiller
Particles smaller than 10 mm in diameter can be inhaled , and particals smaller than 2.5 mm in diameter can be inhaled into the lungs. Ultra Fine Particles (UFP) are smaller than 0.1 mm in diameter and they have been linked with respiratory problems such as asthma.
The fine particals are the main problem with diesel engines.
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. G.B Shaw
In short, it's not a scholarly work, it's a scare piece pandering to an ignorant (and largely scientifically illiterate) public. What's really pathetic is that the NYTimes gave these idiots any press. Blank newsprint would have greater potential for education.... At least it does have a bit of redeeming value; you can use those column inches to light the fireplace.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
This is a very good fiction book that deals with this. Except the AI built into the nano's gets a little out of hand. A very good book.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
cloning makes baby jesus cry
Right. So let's continue using coal. Oh, yeah. Carbon emissions, acid rain, heat dumping, chat disposal. Ever so much better. Right. So let's use dams. Oh, yeah. River blockage, flooding, bursting dangers. Ever so much better. Right. So let's burn wood. Oh, yeah. Deforestation, carbon emissions, heat dumping, ash disposal. Ever so much better. Right. So let's....... let's...... Lack of tech is more dangerous, nimrod.
Nanotechnology is key to the development of 21st century industry much as the transistor was to the latte rhalf of the 20th century. According to the paper, BASF is working on a toothpaste that has enamel built into it. Those worrying about having hydroxyapetite crystals enter the body don't seem to worry about the mercury in fillings potentially causing Minamata (methyl mercury ==> degenerative brain) disease. Nanocrystals are already being employed for medical research, one lab at Vanderbilt is already exploring their potential use as a tracking system for neurological tumors and disease since they can circumvent the blood-brain barrier.
New polymers and materials are also unlikely to enter commercial use if they disintegrate so quickly that inhaling notable quantities becomes a problem. If they're flaking off in the air they'd as likely disintegrate on cantact with water. Buckyballs could be a potential health threat but does that stop people from trying to build star ladders / space elevators out of their derivative materials? Of course not. Look at the benefits from material science over the last decade just using alloys derived from Cold War technology of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We stand at the threshold of potential miracles in medicine (implants that don't get rejected), computing (micronized computers...imagine if today's Game Boy became tommorow's ENIAC), and many other fields.
Of course there will be toxic derivatives of some new materials, after all LSD was discovered by people looking for cold medicines and heroin was discovered when Bayer wanted a more potent pain reliever than morphine. Care should be taken not to let certain materials into the environment, but that can be done by covered, sealed hoods with gloves or mabe this is an incentive to develop better filtering systems (could work against biochem agents too...). Keep the research going and just remember to apply common sense when working with dangerous chemicals.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I just finished reading Prey: A Novel by Michael Crichton (Author) . A fun little bit of nano tech fiction. Good read. We need to watch out for little swarms of nanoprobes in the desert.
True, it would be easy to ingest (or otherwise innoculate yourself with) nanothings. However, the one saving grace could be that they wouldn't neccesarily self-replicate. So, however little you ingest is "all" you need to worry about. If a few nanowidets "escaped" from the lab and infected someone in the general population, there shouldn't be as urgent of a threat of it spreading, unlike viruses or bacteria.
:)
Of course, the threat that makes me shudder is the idea of weaponizing nanotech. Although it wouldn't necessarily be a weapon of mass destruction, it would certainly have some frightening capabilities... like being able to control just when the actual "attack" on your body took place, how much damage was done, etc. But this was all addressed in an X-Files episode, so there's nothing more to be said.
This is insightful?
I've got a list of dangerous things too. How about:
Fire
Rocks
Sharp sticks
Screw drivers
Cars
Planes
Rocks dropped from planes
etc.
etc.
etc.
Because something has the potential to be dangerous is not a valid argument for not researching it. If that argument was applied 10,000 years ago we'd still be getting eaten by wolves and mauled by buffalo.
If you think nuclear energy is dangerous do some research into the number of deaths related to the burning of fossil fuels, the mining of coal, the extraction and transportation of oil & gas. Its all dangerous.
I guess either I scrap my Go Dockers or I'll be fertile soon.
WRONG! It was "One Step Beyond"!
I mean, yeah, there are the obvious reasons, such as:
- Health research will take forever, so all these nanotech companies will be out of business by the time research is completed.
- Nanotech businesses need to start selling their products in order to turn a profit. Waiting for research to proceed will, again, put these companies out of business.
But there is another reason. It is less obvious than the above two. And it is as follows:The government wants development of nano-scale technologies so it can control its people, followed by the entire world. Ever heard of the CFR? It is the Council on Foreign Relations, and it is this entity that has pulled the strings behind the scenes of all presidencies since the Federal Reserve Bank and the Internal Revenue Service were created illegally. Do your research and you'll find that just about everybody who is (or has been) in any position of power in this country is (or was) a member of the CFR.
Whatever they say, the real mission of this organization is to take control of the entire world. It will look something like 1984... but techniques for taking over the world have failed over the centuries. Communism had a Great Purge and introduced, among other things, terrorism into the world. Do your research and you'll find that all the terrorism in the world originated in Communism. The idea was to scare the entire world so much that everybody would give up their freedoms in exchange for security. The Communist Party, as it would have been, would have "protected" everyone, much like how the Mafia will "protect" you from itself if you pay extortion. Other schemes have failed similarly.
The CFR is doing things differently. They are taking one small step at a time, slowly... very slowly. Nobody but a few computer geeks will ever notice that we are all 1% less free today than, say, ten years ago. And it has been, what? 70 years? The CFR is not using any specifically defined method to take over the world. They use whatever comes along. Video cameras are invented, so these are installed in every corner drugstore, restaurant, grocery store, police station, mall, and what-have-you. A number of people believe in the "Mark of the Beast," a technology that, in the end of days, will be implanted in every person's body. This technology would work in conjunction with satellites, GPS, communications technologies, etc. It would hold your money in the form of credits, as money is not backed by gold or anything else for that matter. It would hold your medical records. It would be so convenient because children could no longer be lost or kidnapped... and criminals could no longer get away with their crimes. In effect, it would take away all shadows of privacy. Already, this is beginning to take place. Increasingly, people are getting tatooes and body piercing, essentially getting used to the idea of artificial things placed in their bodies. It's only one step away to implant a convenient, tiny electronic device. And there would be no refusing it anyway, as cash would no longer be accepted anywhere, nor would credit cards or other methods of payment. Nanotechnology serves the purposes of government, as technologies could be sprayed into the air everywhere around the world. People would breathe these into their bodies and the government would know exactly where there are people who do not have "the mark." This is only one example. Many horrifying things could come of this.
Dude, this is totally on-topic. I bet the guy that submitted the story just got to that chapter in Prey WHERE THEY STATE EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME THING.
That being said, I just got to that part of the book myself.
And while we're on the subject, yes. Lots of things can kill you. We live in a world where just about everything that walks, crawls, swims, breathes, slithers, or has been made by man can finish you off. However, there are known toxic limits for most of these things. At issue here is the fact that we don't know how much of what you have to take in, of the new materials, by what medium (skin, lungs, digestive tract) for it to finish you off.
We have no idea. I don't advocate stopping all production... but I can think of lots of reasons why I don't want to live next to the Lab, and i can think of lots of reasons why the people who do should be warned what's being made there. Think of what happens when a chemical lab catches fire. If they treat it as a dangerous substance, even if we don't know how dangerous we don't have to wish there had been a better containment system later. Who knew how much damage thalidomide would do? or DDT? Or how much trouble foreign species would be before introduced to a new environment? It's all tied into the same issue:
Check it out as much as possible before putting it into active use
Never test the water with both feet (i.e., introduce by degrees and with a whole heck of a lot of attention to results) and
Never, ever, EVER lick the spoon.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
It has not been conclusively proven that reading PDFs is safe and effective! So until studies prove it's 100% harmless, you should do nothing!
sulli
RTFJ.
All true, but do you think that FOX News is going to give a shit? Nah, they'll make a big hoohah over the possibility that breathing in nanoparticles can fuck up somebody's lungs.
It was The outer limits, Episode title, "The New Breed"
Thanks for playing....
This has also been reported at the American Chemical Society Meeting in New Orleans. See the report
Service, RF. "Nanomaterials show signs of toxicity." Science [yes, _Science_] April 11, 2003: 243.
Groups from Johnson Space Center and DuPont report that single-walled carbon nanotubes cause scarring in mouse lungs.
You can't exactly test the health hazards of something that you haven't invented yet... sheesh.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Aren't organic nanotech particles good for you? I personally prefer my nanotech free range, fair trade, and open source. After all, if it's anti-corporate nanotech, it must be good for you!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Forget wearable computing, the future is ingestable computing!
Better hurry up and sell off all your stock in wearable computing companies, and tell the military to cancel all their grants in this field. Who wants to wear a computer on their belt, or even in the fibers of there clothes.
Now you can have then inserted into your stomach cavity. Move over Atkins, this would also create the next new fad diet program by utilizing a completely renewable and biodegradable energy source.
How do we know that the nanotech is HIPAA-compliant? If it fixes my damaged liver, will it broadcast that information to spam providers in Utah who will tell me about the evils of drink? And what if I do like to eat steaks? Just because I have nanotech cleaning out my arteries, should I have to worry about it telling my vegan girlfriend that I'm not exactly sticking to a vegan diet when she's not around? Hmm?
> --- All Of The Above --- >
"DDT is perfectly safe"(films in the '50s show kids, sitting at picnic tables, getting fogged with DDT, grinning ear to ear. DDT is later shown to cause all manner of health problems)
"PCBs won't cause widescale pollution" (PCBs found to migrate in wildlife half-way across the globe from a single source)
"Nuclear power is completely safe."(3-mile island, Chernobyl, and countless accidents of one kind or another at US facilities, not to mention millions of tons of deadly radioactive waste that we still haven't figured out what to do with. Don't even get me started on the secretive testing they did on mental institution patients.)
"MBTE is a great way to meet emissions goals!"(too bad it pollutes the water table faster than you can say 'aquifer', and is a known carcinogen. Next time you fill up, look for that nice little "this gas may contain MTBE" sticker. Do a search on "MTBE health hazards" on google some time. That electric car looking better all of the sudden?)
"Asbestos is a great material to use in brake pads, clutches, fire curtains in theaters, insultation on pipes..." (asbestos is now 100% proven to cause lung cancer)
"Lobotomies are a great way to cure mental illness"
Oh, and the greatest of them all, "Cigarettes don't cause cancer." Let's throw in alcohol, too, since both are poisons(and, as a whole, people can't seem to handle alcohol responsibly- I'd be surprised if the death count from alcohol-related deaths isn't higher than cigarettes.)
That's just a small sampling of some of the gems that have come from both the scientific community and industry, often both. Why should we trust them now? These days, you should be forced to prove your product is safe, since time after time scientists and industry have proven themselves incapable of putting safety in front of "progress" and financial interests.
Please help metamoderate.
{cynical}
"Luckily" for the United States, ignoring the future World Nano-Polution Treaty should be no more difficulty than ignoring the Kyoto Protocol or the Ballsitic Missile treaty is today. Don't we use something like 50% of the world's resources while having 6% of its population? US Citizens will be able to afford nano filters. All other citizens should have thought about that before they were born in other countires, shouldn't they?
{/cynical}
of course we won't have to worry about the health risks of nanotech -- because we'll all have little nanotech robots in our bloodstream cleaning up all the nanotech particles they and other nanotech devices with leave behind....
yeah, that's the world I want to live in...
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Inhaling sharp-edged little particles has never been good for your health. Doesn't matter if they're manufactured or not. Take silicosis, for example.
We've got a huge diatomaceous earth plant in the next town over, and even though it's amorphous silica, I've heard you can still get some lung problems from breathing a lot of it for long enough.
Should I be worried that an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife hires someone to hack the nanobots "fixing me up"? This is a far worse danger, IMHO.
> --- All Of The Above --- >
And then engineer tiny gorillas to eat the nanonanobots and in the winter all the gorillas will die. Problem solved.
Just a friendly reminder from the Get A Clue of The Obvious department.
Idiot-driven vehicles are toxic to the public. We'd best halt all vehicle production while studies generate further confirmation of the obvious!
"Of course, the threat that makes me shudder is the idea of weaponizing nanotech. Although it wouldn't necessarily be a weapon of mass destruction, it would certainly have some frightening capabilities..." Wouldn't that be a Weapon of Miniscule Destruction (WmD) instead of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD)?
> --- All Of The Above --- >
What is the number or title of that Twilight Zone episode...
THanks
There was this idiot across the street who thought he was a hardcore gangster or something. His name was Pedro. Anyway, these three jackasses drove up one day in a white Ford Expedition with American license plates. Pedro was outside yelling profanities at these guys when my friend showed up.
He (my friend) had bought a '65 Chevy II a few weeks before and he wanted to show me how he painted it white... it still looked really good despite all the dents and rust. In fact, there was not one part in the car that wasn't bent or damaged in some way. (I helped him work on it many times.)
Anyway, he showed up and when I opened the door, I invited him in, in case some fighting started across the street. My friend stepped in and I closed the door, and IMMEDIATELY upon doing so, we heard those guys in the white Ford taking off all loud, spinning the tires, and then we heard a huge BOOM!!! Almost instantly sure that they had smashed my friend's new (old) car, we opened the door to see Pedro running down the street yelling llame a la policía! llame a la policía! (call the police). This was a bit out of place as this guy was usually in trouble with the police and he was the last guy who would want to call them. But he liked watching other people getting busted so he was very happy. His mother came outside and yelled for him to get in the house.
As it turns out, those three guys in the white Ford got on the accelerator and hauled ass out of the neighborhood, going onto the sidewalk and busting down that tree! They almost hit some cars on the main road on their way out. As for the tree, it was in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. By this time, everybody was in the street looking at the damage. Two minutes later, those three guys--what IDIOTS!--came back, rolled down their windows and yelled a bunch of profanities at everybody in the neighborhood. The whole front of their car was smashed up. The police then showed up and arrested them... They should have left Mexico as fast as their stupid car could carry them. The funniest part was when the police greeted Pedro by name... because they know him so well!!
I mean, do the authors of this thing ever go *outside*? Like, breathe in dust or anything like that? There are tiny particles of all sorts of things all over!
I still can't believe that cloning is on hold because of "ethical" issues, and the thought that nanobots might be "toxic" because they're *small* makes even that look reasonable and sane.
May we never see th
I've read similar papers about the effect of nano particles of substances that are considered "safe", like titanium dioxide. It seems that particles of such a small size are not expelled from the lungs by normal breathing, and thus can stay inside your lungs for 10+ years.
This is not stopping nanotech research though: it just means that the typical factory that would make let's say, nanotubes for LCDs, will need to have high quality air filters so that this particles do not escape to other areas of the factory. This just makes the product more expensive, it will not stop nanotech from being used
Yes.
Take a look at some of their comics
Almost as good as Jack Chick!
The health concerns of nanoscale particles are not at all new; most dangerous or theraputic compounds are in that range, with some being a bit smaller. Things that are larger only tend to affect health in a mechanical sense (getting hit with them at high speeds is bad). Nanotechnology interacts with the body like chemicals do, and therefore needs to be studied in the same ways for evaluating health risks. But health testing of chemicals isn't at all new.
think about it. some maniach creates some nanobots that do nothing but destroy brain cells of their victoms, or the artery walls on the brain/heart....or casue your liver to bleed, or bust open your colon to your paratenium.
then...a few days after yout exposed to a few thousand of these...you die. sorry...but this is tech that should not be created.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That's the one, he injected himself with the 'bots because he found out he had cancer. The 'bot were designed to 'fix flaws' and remove the cancer, turned him into a superman...then a freak.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Quality Control will be a nightmare...99.99% accuracy will result in 100 errors per million units produced. That is 100 errors straight off the production line.
Imagine what will be happening to the things as they age.
I guess there are two ways of designing a nanobot. You could design it to decay quickly. That means that we will have billions of the these tiny devices going through strange transformations in the decay process. You could design the nano machines to be durable...but things change with time. Nothing is perfectly stable. That means the tiny machines will end up in alls sorts of unpredictible configurations.
Even worse, it is impossible to predict how the nano machines created today will interact with those created tomorrow. When talking of billions of things, it is likely that many will end up in stable configurations where they are doing things we don't like.
From the ETC Group website:
"ETC group is dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. To this end, ETC group supports socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and it addresses international governance issues and corporate power."
(http://www.etcgroup.org/about.asp)
Beware of any research backed by a political action group. Emotions tend to outweight and warp data.
68% of all satistics are wrong!
My karma is in a nose dive
A couple milliamperes alone are enough to cause muscle to go into tight contraction. That spells "heart attack" if it goes through your heart.
Having measured myself, I know I'm 2.2 megaohms from one hand to the next. I'm told that, if you puncture the skin, that goes down to only a few ohms.
Seriously, Ben Bova wrote a couple of books on the political consequences of nanomachines. I thought that Slashdot, of all places, would have smaller percentage of nanoluddites than the general public. I mean, come on people. All technology comes with consequences. We usually accept these risks freely.
And, think about it. The types of nanotechnology Ben Bova described as dangerous were self-replicating. But aren't bacteria self-replicating? What about chemical explosions? Nuclear reactions?
The only types of nanomachines that are dangerous are those that perform only a minimal amount of precautions as to what specific things they can operate on.
Also, antidotes will come a lot more easily, should a nanomachine prove to have negative effects on health, there's no reason another nanomachine can't be built to specifically destroy the first. At the point when nanomachines become really useful, they'll be capable of recognizing entire molecules based on physical structure, not just on chemical properties. Nanomachines will be able to be built to specifically recognize the structure of the target nanomachine, and so developers will be able to precisely control what nanomachines will operate on.
Finally, I don't think people realize how difficult it will be to create a self-replicating nanomachine. It's a damned complicated process. It's not like computer viruses that can copy themselves with a hardcoded memcpy() command; self-replicating nanomachines would have to be able to build another copy of itself without using itself as a reference.
What's this Submit thingy do?
1984? sounds like this is just crap from big brother
> "I allege that SCO is full of it" -Linus
This problem of inhaled nanobots causing health problems was talked about in Neil Stephenson's book "The Diamond Age". In the same book, Neil Stephenson also mentioned armies of nanobots going in to kill harmful nanobots leading to a black soot like dust being created from all these dead nanobots, that shouldn't be inhaled.
On the other end of things, Ben Bova, in his book "Moonwar" describes certain humans having injected armies of nanobots into their body that would repair damage and fix problems.
Now if we were able to build "human repair nanobots" and everyone used them, wouldn't these repair nanobots cancel out the harmful effects of nanobots that shouldn't be in your body?
basically, use nanobots to fight nanobots, or defend against nanobots. I know that defense is usually used to mean fighting off a malicious aggressor, but its not neccessary.
- Tempestdata
This paper appears to have been published on the ETC group's own imprint, and not subjected to peer review. Take it with a grain of salt.
Somewhat related to this topic, there have been studies done about the dangers of fine particle air pollution. Most fine particles are formed when emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with ammonia to form particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which interfere with the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen.
This can lead to heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory ailments, and premature death. I'm paraphrasing from some reports found here.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
This reminds me of the Cowboy Bebop movie.
Seriously, people are so concerned about health risks in EVERYTHING... nanoparticles are everywhere, all around us.. constantly.. why are we caring about them NOW.. we survived for thousands of years. What ever happened to natural selection? Oh that's right.. we put warning labels on everything in existance because some moron doesn't know that PreparationH is external only. Geez.. just take the warning labels off of everything and let the problem work itself out.
If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
"DDT is perfectly safe"
It was specifically said that it was safe to *spray people* with an insecticide, or just that food sprayed with it is safe to eat?
"PCBs won't cause widescale pollution"
But in what kind of quantities? There's probably water that I've pissed at one point or another in the US over in Mongolia...but not a lot of it.
"Nuclear power is completely safe."
Umm...on this one I can safely say you're full of shit. People were *petrified* of nuclear power for the longest time, and the dangers of it were definitely known. Marie Curie had come and gone (the *amount* of radiation released during government weapons tests was lied about, but again, that's not the technology's fault in the least, and holding off longer wouldn't have helped against simple factual lies). Nuclear power *is* very safe compared to our most common power source, coal (puts sulphur dioxide into the air, causes black lung and other health problems for miners involved with it). Three Mile Island wasn't a disaster. Chernobyl only happened because the workers that triggered it deliberately disabled all the safeguards and ignored warnings to test a particular backup system. The reactor was deliberately being operated out of spec, and *not* in an approved manner. You can do all *kinds* of wonderfully stupid things with all kinds of devices if you deliberately misuse them.
"MBTE is a great way to meet emissions goals!"
Don't know anything about MBTE, so I can't comment.
"Asbestos is a great material to use in brake pads, clutches, fire curtains in theaters, insultation on pipes..."
Asbestos is still being used, because it has impressive properties. Yes, use *is* scaled back, but a move to halt research on it would have been far premature. In addition, it is incredibly useful from a safety standpoint if a fire does occur. I'm not sure that it hasn't helped more than it's hurt. Tthere are a *lot* of things that cause cancer that we deal with. The sun, secondhand smoke, etc, etc. Simply being carcinogenic is not a death blow to a substance.
"Lobotomies are a great way to cure mental illness"
At the time they were in use to prevent progressively worse grand mal seizures, they were the only alternative available to doing nothing and eventually dying. They were hardly a general purpose cure for "mental illness". So at the time, well, they weren't a bad idea. Yes, they did inflict mental damage, but damage that could be lived with.
"Cigarettes don't cause cancer."
The result of an industry cover-up, not a case where we didn't know what we were doing. And the tobacco companies are paying dearly for it now. More time wouldn't have helped -- it would just have produced a "no, they're definitely safe" response from said companies.
Let's throw in alcohol, too, since both are poisons
What are you, nuts? Alcohol's been with humans *forever*, and we've known that it causes damage *forever*. You can't blame this on technological progressives in the least.
That's just a small sampling of some of the gems that have come from both the scientific community and industry, often both. Why should we trust them now?
Your complaint is a sample of why I intensely distrust anti-technological arguments. They generally pick out a few examples, ignore the general case (where things work fine), and are quite misleading. I agree that sometimes we don't know all the side effects of something (especially social side effects, which are hard to predict), but that's a long, long way from being anywhere near deciding to postpone production.
May we never see th
Once nanotech gets movin, there will be people who made their fortunes in it. Any change like that is fundamental and people oppose it.
But of course it poses a health risk. DUH. Most any technology capable of curing diseases could more easily applied to destruction.
God spoke to me
Right. So let's continue using coal. Oh, yeah. Carbon emissions, acid rain, heat dumping, chat disposal. Ever so much better. Right. So let's use dams. Oh, yeah. River blockage, flooding, bursting dangers. Ever so much better. Right. So let's burn wood. Oh, yeah. Deforestation, carbon emissions, heat dumping, ash disposal. Ever so much better. Right. So let's....... let's...... Lack of tech is more dangerous, nimrod.
a.) You're fucking stupid. Analyzing potential hazards before mass deployment doesn't mean returning to the Stone Age. To the contrary, the examples you mentioned are exactly about "not analyzing (or having the capability to do so) negative (long term) effects of stuff that brings a positive effect on the surface and/or short term."
Lack of tech is NOT as dangerous as "random tech". And by the way, all the examples you mentioned involved tech, too. Tech that hasn't been thought about well enough before widespread adoption.
> All technology comes with consequences. We usually accept these risks freely.
Translation: we usually don't bother to assess these risks until we've already deployed the technology.
> The only types of nanomachines that are dangerous are those that perform only a minimal
> amount of precautions as to what specific things they can operate on.
Translation: I am incapible of coming up with any possible risks from other kinds of nanomachines in 15 seconds of thought, so clearly there aren't any.
Translation of the entire post: Listen to me! I didn't read the article!
Basically, if you have a bunch of really tiny stuff and you breathe it in, it doesn't matter what function it's performing at the time... it can screw up your lungs. If you have a bunch of pieces of a defunct nanomachine wandering around in your bloodstream, it can cause truly entertaining effects in a truly entertaining variety of places. If you absorb interestingly coherant nanomachine parts through your skin, interesting things can happen.
Parallels have already been drawn to asbestos and fibreglass.
And here you are, saying that the only kind of nanomachine that is at all dangerous is a self-replicating one. Oh, wait, maybe that's the only thing that Ben Bova thought were dangerous... he's a sci-fi writer, he must be right, huh?
Well, there's always Neil Stephenson... remember the 'toner' in one of his books? How much good d'ya suppose that does your lungs?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If you want to avoid karma-whoring, then you should post anonymously. Duh.
-fred
True. But it's possibly a good argument for being careful. Just about any technology is potentially 'dangerous', as the list highlights. But they are not equally dangerous. Sharp sticks are dangerous. Yes. But they're only dangerous reatil. Nanotech 'run amock' is potentially dangerous wholesale.
If we would all just take the blue pill, we'd have nothing to worry about, right?!
Going to ban heavy trucks? Their exhaust is loaded with microparticulates. Living in a modern society has risks, what's the news there? Living in the woods has worse risks. That's the price of advancement.
Google search on diesel particulate and cancer.
..don't panic
How do we know that the nanotech is HIPAA-compliant? If it fixes my damaged liver, will it broadcast that information to spam providers in Utah who will tell me about the evils of drink? And what if I do like to eat steaks? Just because I have nanotech cleaning out my arteries, should I have to worry about it telling my vegan girlfriend that I'm not exactly sticking to a vegan diet when she's not around? Hmm?
First, privacy impacts should be minimal given that we're talking about particles. Machinery would be what you're talking about, and you could surround it in a biodegradable (gelatin?) capsule and make the machinery itself out of largely biodegradable materials. Perhaps then you'd be right to worry about urinary "metabolites" since that could prove tricky, especially if one or two get through there intact and go rogue.
For HIPAA compliance, use biodegradable materials and give the manufacturers their own laws/ regulations. Again, at this point we're only talking about materials, so it may not fix your liver so much as tell you where the damage specifically is. Same with damaged/clogged arteries: that's not just plaque in there, but cellular scar tissue and abnormal growth too. If you leave a medical paper around the house, your honest answer could be that you were concerned about your heart's condition and you wanted to get checked now before running into problems down the road. Seriously, with the current party system, medical privacy will be protected somehow before they allow such therapies to be used on a widespread basis.
I can't help out with the dietary issue too much, maybe you just ought to tell her that you wanted to help the struggling small farmer so you decided to eat a 24 oz. steak once a week with some Yorkshire pudding for dessert. Best of luck on that one...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
This was already posted.
My lab works with biological application of NP's. Certain types do cause apoptosis in vitro, but are not really any more dangerous than, say, bleach. All of the NP's we deal with are non-aerosolizable and come in deagglutinization media (expensive water). I suppose if you were rich enough to buy enough NP's to form an aerosol cloud there might be a problem, but then you can also shoot yourself in the head with a shotgun. No one's stopping you. These things pose as much threat, physically, as a virus, and much less biologically.
We already have a known health hazard from particulates released by internal combustion and industrial combustion. Can we halt those as well?
In most of Dickens work, the author portrayed the negative health effects of spewing bucky balls and other carbon compounds, (aka soot, cinders, smoke) into the air. You should see what the cats leave.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Nanotechnology companies said that the havoc that asbestos claims have created in industry has made businesses extremely sensitive to the health impact of new materials. Halting development to perform health studies would simply send nanotechnology development offshore, they said.
What asbestos claims have done is make industry extremely sensitive to the health impacts on industry of not being protected from lawsuits. They can avoid these lawsuits two ways, (1) moving offshore, (2) legislative "relief." So, if you are in congress they will provide donations to you and perhaps jobs in your district if you enact (2). On the other hand, if we make import of this technology illegal, then moving offshore isn't so profitable. Certainly the EU will be quick to outlaw it; the US following that lead may be enough to stall it.
Sure, it may be able to do a few promising things. But our technology is so capable, and expandable in so many directions, why head off in the most dangerous ones first? Do we have to let the rich get richer at every opportunity, while continuing to degrade the environments most folks actually live in? You can be sure the rich will have ways to filter this stuff from their palaces and domes.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Here is a link to a list and description of Ben Bova Books
. Although I'm not a fan of Bova, I've read his Mars and Moonwar books. I found the nanotechnology subplot quite interesting. He treats it as the double edged blade it is.
SCO to Hell
Bear in mind that not all nanotechnology research involves building tiny dust-like autonomous critters. A lot of the real nanotech research involves building structures on significantly larger substrates, just as microchips are built, for all sorts of different reasons.
Autonomous dust gets lots of press because it sounds cool, but we should keep in mind that any real or imagined dangers that such stuff presents don't necessarily apply to all of nanotechnology.
Today, researchers at Wahoo State University found that nanoscale-sized water molecules can be extremely hazardous. "People may not realize, but water molecules are small enough to penetrate the lungs, skin, and even cell membranes," claims Dr. Phil McCracken, who performed the research. "Our work has shown that sufficient inhalation of small water molecules can even be fatal within minutes."
Researchers at Dumas College have also shown that our atmosphere is littered with extremely tiny, sub-nanoscale molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen. According to Dr. Benjamin Dover, "these molecules are even smaller than the hazardous, nano-scale water molecules. Some of these may be as small as two atoms, occasionally even a single atom!" Dr. Dover recommends avoiding such molecules, especially oxygen, which has been demonstrated to have damaging effects upon the human body, including a strange addictive behavior. "We have found that many subjects become dependent upon this nano-substance, and removal from a source of oxygen can be just as fatal as acute water toxicity," he says. "Additionally, because it is so small, oxygen has found to be extremely flammable in the presence of innocuous non-nanoscale materials such as wood or coal." Dr. Dover recommends that people avoid oxygen, as even newborn children become addicted to it immediately after removal of the umbilical cord.
Drs. Dover and McCracken agree that the best course of action is the removal of these dangerous nano-materials from the earth's environment. This will be difficult, as 75% of the earth's surface consists of water and 21% of the earth's atmosphere consists of oxygen. However, the benefits outweigh the costs. "Think of the children!" says Senator Fouckwidt (D-Ca). "We must immediately stop research on these dangerous nano-chemicals before they lead to widescale deaths."
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
We are all dying anyway, people. I say let it rip with the nanotech. Go for it! How could it get any worse than it already is? We are ALL dying!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize how the tobacco industry "spun" its perspective. One only has to read "The Big Down" to know how anti-technology they are. So one should not trust any other publications more than one trusts the claims of the average television commercial.
Quality Control will be a nightmare...99.99% accuracy will result in 100 errors per million units produced. That is 100 errors straight off the production line. Imagine what will be happening to the things as they age.
The upside is that nanomachines - defined as mechanical devices whose working parts are single molecules - are subject to breakage but NOT wear. Unlike macro devices their individual parts are not lump-of-clay-like collections of smaller parts, that can work well in many configurations. Nanomachine parts are either correctly connected or not.
Thus they are more like digital systems (where the answer is either right or wrong) than analog (where the answer may have varying degrees of error).
This all-or-nothing nature, in combination with the reuse of single components for many functions, makes it possible to design in self-diagnostic tools. The processor and storage portion of the device can use error-checking codes to detect corruption (reducing the incidence of undetected corruption to arbitrarily low levels), while the mechanical parts can be included in diagnostic routines that they will fail if even a single atom is out of place or a single component missing, doubled, or out-of-position.
With components being churned out by the billion, stop-forever-on-any-failure, march-to-shipping (or start executing the redundancy-checked main program) -on-pass is adequate testing to assure that only good machines get into use. "Broken" machines can be scavenged - down to the atomic level - to clean up the "manufacturing floor" without perpetuating their breakage in devices involved in their salvage or constructed from their remains.
As for aging: Redundancy checks (and halt-on-failure) can trivially reduce the likelyhood of an undetected software failure to arbitrarily low levels, just as they did in the original manufacturing process. Similarly, periodic rerunning of the hardware diagnostics can do the same for the physical components.
(There's a theory that the observed tendency of each foetus to go through the evolutionary stages of the organism's history during its development serves as a similar "manufacturing QA test" that the important genetic systems to be used later in life are correctly in place - with the foetus dying early if a major system is broken or missing. It works well. But designed systems can do better.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Fire
Rocks
Sharp sticks
Screw drivers
Cars
Planes
Rocks dropped from planes
Rocks? How about bowling balls, easter eggs, and a 2,600lb rubberband ball?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Every day they delay they make it more likely I'll die of something that will be cured by nanotech after my death.
Delaying nanotech isn't necessarily safer. It just means that you'll be less likely to be exposed to new dangers, but more likely to die from old ones.
Death when only a few decades old is taken for granted, though, so people stand in the road arguing about the possible toxicity of the road paint while the truck speeds toward them.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Although some of the components for assembling a nano machine are in place (blowing superglue through nano tubes to smooth them, bucky balls, carbon nano tubes) There is already a wide variety of nano machines readily available, they're called cells, quite frankly the first massive leaps in independant nano machines (as opposed to surfaces) would be in the form of genetically engineering new types of cells with new programming. Getting over the hurdle of airborne particulate matter would be no real problem. They could be grown with time release anti-hystamine medicine encapsulated in them or any other number of tricks...why people assume that independant nano machines would be made out of metal when cells are more readily available for the job at hand is beyond me.
Damn, did anyone see where it landed?
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Yes, the possible ill effects of microscopically small particles are chilling. I propose a moratorium on them. In particular, I propose that we ban 02. This extremely volatile microscopic substance is easily inhaled, and is largely responsible for fires (perhaps even spontaneous human combustion!) and explosions, is associated in part with aging, and causes materials of all sorts to oxidize and deteriorate. It's clear to me that 02 is one of the most insidious and dangerous nanosized particles known to science, and must be banned forthwith!
Note to moderators: funny, not troll, please.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson has a good look at what a future might be like with lots and lots of nanotech.
The human nose is a marvellous tool, as GC/MS analysis of the same samples rarely disagreed with my initial findings.
On the other hand, I don't envisage sniffing any nanobots anytime soon.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
This is idiotic. If a very large object is dropped on you, you will die. Does this mean we should stop making large objects? A medium size object can kill you to, as can a small object. Does this mean we should stop making them as well?
I'd be shocked to hear that very very small things couldn't harm you, since this would make them different from objects at every other scale. But the fact that very small things can be harmful (just like everything else) isn't news and certainly isn't a sound basis for making any sort of policy decisions.
-- MarkusQ
...made by reducing the size of spores or some other microbe to a tiny size to help pass them on to the targets, this makes senses. Especially if the nanobots are made of a toxic material, as much electronics is.
interesting concept, but again, given the limits of nanotech, how do we know it won't have a reporting mechanism? and with biodegradability and short lifespan, we have to worry about those which don't follow instructions. so long as nano-tech can't replicate, it's fine - once it has replication, it gains the abilities of any cancer - mutation of basic instructions, due to machine error or radiation or failure.
> --- All Of The Above --- >
You know, that little argument of yours makes me really nauseous.
What you're saying here is, "These people have a hidden agenda: they are using a stance that is against scientific progress for their own personal profit." You are thus accusing them of the highest form of hypocracy.
On the basis of what evidence? Someone told you, or you read somewhere, that 'groups such as this' sometimes do this for personal advantage. You've never actually done any research on this particular group. You've almost certainly never done any research on 'groups such as this', or you'd realize that whether they are misguided or not, the vast majority of people who start such groups believe in what they're doing.
But you don't want to debate them on the merits of their science. Oh, no, that would be boring, and a lot of work. Much easier to just say that they're only in this for the money. And there's a bonus, too: even if they're proved to have been absolutely right in all their claims, years down the road, you can say that you didn't listen to them because they were clearly only in it for the money, and the fact that they were right was mere coincidence. And you can pretend that you don't have egg all over your face.
I'm not saying these people are right. However, in justice, I do them the honor of assuming that they actually mean what they say, until proven otherwise.
I extend the same courtesy to corporations as well. Unfortunately, one of the things that the trade group representing American industry has said, flat out, is that companies should not take moral and ethical constraints into consideration when drawing up business plans; the only things that should constrain a company are dedication to profit, and (a distant second) legal issues. So if it's legal to ship a (profitable) product that kills hundreds of thousands of people, it is not only allowed... it is REQUIRED.
But of course, you would much rather trust the corporations than the people who are concerned about what the corporations are doing, or the government which (up until recently) has been trying to keep said corporations from killing more people than is reasonably necessary.
Hope you like the world you're building.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I am an atmospheric chemist and my field of research is the formation of secondary organic particles. These are formed every day from the chemical reactions of nitrogen oxides and volatile orgaic compounds, in the presence of sunlight. The particles are created from a molecular level, which results in billions of ultra fine particles per cubic meter. We usually use the units "number of particles per cubic centimeter", and the number of ultrafines is huge: up to 80 000! These often have carcinogens such as benzene or toluene ad/ab-sorbed and do cause many of the bad health effects mentioned in the article. We are exposed to these ALL THE TIME. Even inside, the concentrations get up to 15 000. It seems unlikely to me that the production of even a million nano-robots (which seems to be what ppl on /. are focusing on) are going to do much, simply based on their size, but will be much more damaging based on what they are designed to do.
I could go on blah blah blah, but I won't.
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl
Aside from the environmental vandalism that the Japanese propagate on a wide scale, from what I've heard their concern for animal welfare when doing biological experiments is unacceptable by Western standards.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I work in nanoscience. There is no reason to even mention nanomachines right now. What we work with is dirt. I was very glad that this article knew that.
One of the most advanced nanotechnology fabrication techniques out there is to burn pure graphite at a high temperature quickly. Use specific gasses/temperatures/pressures to get desired nanotube characteristics.
Yup, that's scary stuff. Ash. Dirt. I'm afraid.
The article wasn't bad, it had it's points, but except for nanotubes, every example of nanotechnology it gave was really just saying: hey this dirt we found over here, yeah, it might not be good for us. I think that should be pretty obvious to mankind at this point. We're beyond the dirt eating stage of evolution.
Nano-particles are things we've been dealing with since the industrial revolution. I'm not going to pretend that they're all perfectly safe, I have no idea. To treat the field any differently than chemistry, or solid state physics is crazy. People don't go around inhaling things in chemistry labs.
I do think that we should be looking at the health hazards that might accompany nanotechnology. What I got out of the PDF was that quite a few people are doing that. That makes me warm and fuzzy inside, I feel like we are being responsible scientests and not recommending anything for mass production before we know what it does.
The alarmist tone of the article is completely undeserved. The amount of material we work with in the lab is insignificant. The only real commercial nanotechnology product is titanium dioxide, which was developed as a SAFE replacement for lead in paint quite a while ago.
The point was that somethings have previously been thought of as being safe, when infact they were not as safe as we were lead to be belived. And it pays to do a bit more research in to the possible health effects before we go full-steam-ahead in to research.
Anyway of course free-ranging nanos will be a health risk. What you neglect to notice is that nature does nanoscale engineering too, and there is already nanoscale particulate matter floating around entering your lungs and being a health risk. As per the diamond age (which everyone else is mentioning) there will be some sort of protocol which instructs people to make nanites that break down harmlessly (this is only logical, and stephenson is smart, which is why we like to cite and quote him, not to mention the broad familiarity in the tech 'scene') and people will ignore it, making dangerous nano. Nano forensics will become a serious field, I'm sure.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm more inclined to think a little extra iron won't hurt.
But older people help me out here -- Heathkit made the heat sinks on one of their first solid state ham amplifiers out of a seriously poisonous metal. Not too smart considering the amateur operator's inclination to get out the power drill and modify. Apparently, it wouldn't have taken a very large particle lodged in a lung to cause weird (and therefore trial and error to diagnose) very possibly fatal consequences over two or three weeks.
Why poison somebody the old way when you can have an army of particles _position_ themselves throughout the victim's body. I mean, I'm just saying...
So two years of dead/dying/sick people is ok if it will mildly placate the luddite population? It's not like the scientists actually were worried about the 9-headed dogs, they knew what they were doing wasn't magic voodoo, it's the uneducated populace who felt it was needed, and probaly just a small, vocal section of them. I hope they enjoyed the dead people.
It was also once supposed to be safe. But it has been shown to be linked to cancer, acid rain and soil erosion. But unlike DDT or asbestos, DHMO is still in wide use, even in dairy industry! See the web page and join the coalition against DHMO.
I'm a scientist (biologist) with over 30 years of research practice. I have read thousands of scientific papers. This document -- although it may not have been peer reviewed -- appears to me a well written, solid piece of work. Not like the ravings of some of the anti-biotech folks. Some of the things they suggest (e.g. a general panel of researchers to formulate guidelines which would then be followed by the industry) are a bit naive. Things don't work like that in real life. However, I believe that their concern is well founded. I am also astonished by the total lack of control over this potentially dangerous field.
I am a scientist working with nanotechnology, so listen to what I have to say.
Although this article does bring up some important points, it is basically FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doom, for the newbs). The fact that it is self-published is a big tip-off. Here are some important points, some repeated from others' replies, but repeated here because they are important.
(1) Pretty much everyone in materials science is working the word "nano" into their work. Nanotechnology and nanoscience are buzzwords that are currently very hot. Hot areas attract lots of researchers. More than that, though, great numbers of people apply the latest hot label to their work if they can, because it helps them get funding, which helps them do their work. For example, a seminally hot buzzword is "cancer." If you can somehow claim that your work will lead to curing cancer, then it is more likely to get funded. This may sound dumb, but it's reality.
(2) Just about all materials science research is nano-research. So, in many cases, adding the "nano" tag to your work is valid.
(3) Most nanotechnology and nanoscience work does NOT deal with powders. You can call your stuff nano if it has features less than 0.1 microns. Nanoscience deals with layers that are nano, bulk materials which have grain structures on the nano scale, the production of nano-sized features on surfaces, and so on. Some things that you could call nanoscience and nanotechnology are common. In fact, you are using a nanomachine to read this post. (There are structures in computer chips that are only a nanometer or two thick, for example the gate oxide in those billions of transistors.)
(4) Most nano-sized things are not going to jump out and kill you. That is because they are a part of a larger thing, stuck together, if you like. To be of any concern for entry into the body, these things have to be airborne. When part of something, they are not.
(5) Many nanopowders are probably unhealthy. Nano-sized things described in (4) can be freed by smashing something up. Of course, any time you smash something up, you are creating nanoparticles, too. And every time you burn something, you are creating nanoparticles. Lots. All of these things can get into your lungs. Many of them stay there to cause cancer or scarring. That's what's so dangerous about diesel engines and coal power plants. So really, breathing in nanoparticles is nothing new.
(6) One thing that makes some inhaled particles which your lungs do not eject (less than 1 micron) dangerous, is that they can cause scarring, which over time results in loss of working lung tissue. Example materials are: asbestos, silica particles, diatomaceous earth, fiberglass, and probably nanotubes. Many other materials don't cause this kind of damage. Why? Well, tiny particles are usually very sharp. If your body can't dissolve them, then they stay sharp. And if your body also cannot eject them, then they keep cutting for the rest of your life. Only people who inhale a lot of these bad things on a regular basis get enough of them in their lungs to cause disease.
Anyway, there are many materials that we know do not dissolve in the body, but most stuff does, thanks to water.) Any nanopowder of a material that doesn't break down in the body will cause an "-osis" disease if enough of it is inhaled. But, unless you work in a factory making hundreds of pounds of nanopowders for sale, then it is unlikely that you have anything to worry about. If your specific worries are the titanium oxide and zinc oxide in sunscreens, then you should also stop taking vitamins, because they are in there, too. But, I'm pretty sure that they dissolve in your body, probably through hydroxylation.
(7) Drexler is an idiot. His nanoassemblers and the gray goo are pure fantasy. I won't bother to go into it, but unless such machines can be backed up by an army of Maxwell Demon
Agent Orange? DDT? X-Rays? Radon? MTBE? Do any of these things and the horrific results of insufficient scientific investigation into their widespread use ring any bells with the progressivists? Or do the genetic mutilations, painfully lingering cancer deaths and pandemic lung diseases mean nothing? Are the millions of people who have died or are suffering long, difficult and agonizing lives just amount to, "Oh, well. Sucks to be them." Are we all your little lab rats? Oh, that's right. You don't USE lab rats because it slows down time-to-production.
Moral dilemas exist because we have morals and are concerned about continuation of the species and the ecosphere. Even your enlightened self-interest and pragmatism should reason that if you kill everything you are part of the group called everything. If you kill a lot of people then a lot of people will come after your ass.
We haven't grown soft. We're starting to get a backbone and use our brains when you progress-at-all-costs, scientism-religiously-blindered idiots behave with your New Thing like a cat with a mouse.
"we'd still be getting eaten by wolves "
Here is an interesting study for you: Try to find references to vicious wolf attacks on humans.
Chances are you will only find fairy tales.
Wolf attacks on humans are VERY rare, if not nonexistent, without some other influence like rabies.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I must have missed the meeting were we decided that all nano machines must be designed for medical use and applied by inhale/ingest.
It was last Tuesday.
Sorry you weren't there; we were waiting for you.
The decision was nearly unanimous, except for Charlie, but, as you know, no one these days pays attention to Charlie anyway.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
From the perspective of a materials scientist, this looks like people worried that nanoparticles are going to be the next asbestos. It makes sense to look at the properties of these particles and test for toxicity, but if ultra-fine particles are going to kill us, the stuff we've been pumping into the atmosphere probably already would have. I haven't read the paper over completely, but I get the feeling that this is similar to the arguments over genetically engineered crops and the greenhouse effect. It's probably not going to be a serious problem until we're quite a ways down the road and once it is, we'll probably figure out a way to fix it. That's what scientists do. In the case of sunscreen, I'd say the nanoparticles are doing more good than harm right now. Would you like skin cancer now, or some unspecified disease that may or may not materialize later? That's not to trivialize the arguments being made, I just think the paper uses scare tactics more than it should. This reads like a "BE AFRAID, give us funding!" paper. [-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!