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The Issues of Nano-Safety

Posted by Hemos on from the nano-nano-nano dept.

Ineffable 27 writes "Today's New York Times has an interesting article looking at some of the emerging research into the health and safety risks of nanotech and nanomaterials." Free reg. blah blah. It's a decent article, but it's the same type of questions that groups like The Foresight Institute have been thinking about for a long long time now.

3 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Disasters and benefits, oh my... by tekiegreg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A good book on the topic is "Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea" (ISBN: 0131014005). In it some of the problems of Nanotech are discussed (in addition to the benefits of course).

    IMHO though, this is just another snag in the means of progress. We develop Genetic engineering and people are suffering from allergies to Gene spliced tortillas (that was Del Taco IIRC), or for a worse idea, we develop advanced shipbuilding and watch the Titanic sink (over and over again...).

    However will Nanotech help society as whole more than it will hurt? IMHO yes. Though it truly remains to be seen whether or not a bunch of Nano-bots will destroy us all from our insides (I think that was from the book), or a bunch of clumped Nano-tubes will get in our lungs (as the article said).

    --
    ...in bed
  2. Viruses and playing God by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some would say that viruses are God's nanotech. Small, self-replicating, non-living, and very very potent. The damage that a virus can do to an ecosystem depends on its programming, but even the most mild of viruses can cause serious reactions in hosts.

    I'm not sure that we have come to the point of understanding where we can control nanobots. If the biggest software company in the world can't put out a bug free software package, how can we expect that a handful of scientists to put together what is in effect a man-made virus. It would be a sad day if one of these (excuse the pun) bugs were released and some error was caught too late.

  3. You missed the 15% mortality rate thing by burgburgburg · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Right at the beginning of the article was the discussion of the 15% mortality rate of mice exposed to nanotubes. It was, according to the DuPont researcher leader, "the highest death rate we had ever seen" (and this is a man who started out researching asbestos). Seems they clump up in the lungs and this suffocated 15% of the mice. This doesn't seem nebulous. This seems quite specific.

    And I'll note that 24 hours later, the other 85% seemed perfectly healthy, the assumption being that the nanotubes clumping stopped them from getting into deep regions of the lungs and allowed them to be expelled by coughing.

    So, with specifics of 15% mortality in mice from nanotube exposure, does that warrant concern?