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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.
I would say that, on the whole, nanoparticle cookie cutters sound extremely bad for your health.
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
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.
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
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."
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
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
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.
The file looks much smaller than 726kb.. Did I lose the other half?
You probably have your machine running in 64 bit mode, reboot in 32 bit mode and everything should be fine..
Trolling is a art,
Also, it wasn't pubilshed in a peer-reviewed forum - generally a good indication of poor science.
Quack!Quack!.....QUACK!!
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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?
We should outlow dihydrogen oxide as well, since breathing it in can cause death within minutes.
It also damages property and the environment.