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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.
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
(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 was one of the newer Outer Limits shown on Sci-fi.
They ended up cremating the "infected" guy's remains in a laboratory fire to stop the nano-buggers.
In the mid-1970's there was a brief (2 years or so) voluntary moratorium on genetic research due to the health hazards thought to be inherent. Al Gore was one of the proponents at the time, I believe.
When it was figured out that gene splicing is less like Dr. Frankenstein and more like traditional breeding sped up, and that 9-headed dogs weren't about to appear, the moratorium was lifted.
The point being that there is precedent.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
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
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.