The Issues of Nano-Safety

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.

Comments

Safety? Ha, who needs it!

[Anonymous Coward]

If we had thought about wussy things like "safety" back in the 40's we wouldn't have developed the atom bomb. And that, good sirs, would be a travesty, because there would have never been any Duke Nukem Games.

Disasters and benefits, oh my...

[tekiegreg]

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).

some other links

[stonebeat.org]

Here are some other links about issues with nano-tech http://www.theecologist.org/searchResults.html?arc hiveOnly=1&searchString=nanotechnology&Search=Sear ch and here is a one that talk abouts issues with brain implants to boost intelligence.

Viruses and playing God

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Yet another article

[Scalli0n]

Here's a link to the page, no login required:

LINK!

Sig & Below

One of my nanotech dreams.

[dark-br]

I imagined from the moment I heard of nanotech, that we could have devices implanted in ourselves that, when we're in the sun, could bring chlorophyll to the surface of our skins and create food from it. That way we can all use up CO2 from the atmosphere to offset the CO2 emissions of industry, and help industry along all the more!

We get the benefits of industry, with free food, and a way to combat one of the current downfalls of industry!

My other nanotech dream is that nanobots in my body could change me into a lesbian and I could go have hot lesbian sex each night, but I don't mention that one much

Stephenson's the Diamond age

[denubis]

To me, the most interesting part of any given technology are the cultural implications, especially as how with every advance in technology, our options become more manifest and manifold. (And if that last sentence didn't make sense, blame my cold.)

Stephenson's Diamond Age is a fascinating examination of this. Now, given that the book was written on a victorian framework (which shapes what issues are pondered) it is still an enjoyable read, and an even more enjoyable thought experiment into nanotech.

When people have the ability to build anything they want from the atom up, the only thing constraining us will be those constraints that our society dictates. (Everything else is merely requires sufficently talented engineers.) Unfortunatly, the dangerous aspects of nanotech also are only constrained by our society.

Worries about grey-goo scenarios and DNA plagues shouldn't stop us from researching nanotech -- if only for the reason that solutions to these problems can only be found through nanotechnological means.

Anyways, I digress -- for a fascinating study of nanotech, read the Diamond Age.

But will nanotech even be developed?

[mongbot]

Before we start looking into the safety of nanotechhnology, I think the question of whether nanotech will ever be feasible should be addressed. Here are a few basic problems that I've yet to see any solutions for:
1. How is energy going to be supplied to the nanobots?
2. How are the nanobots going to be produced, economically?
3. How are they going to move (wheels, flying)?

I don't understand why there is so much emphasis on such a poorly-defined field of technology that has shown so little promise so far. The smaller you make things, the more difficult and expensive they are to produce. Nanotechnology seems to be just a convenient "magic" technology useful only for SF writers.

Re:But will nanotech even be developed?

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Miniturization is only a pain when you're talking about going from a macro scale to a micro/nano scale. When your assembly lines operate on that scale, making things on the same scale is trivial.

Right. And, conveniently, we don't even have to fully go from macro to nano-scale - biological systems can supply us with many of the tools needed for nanoscale assembly. There is a lot of promising work done in the field of self-assembling nanostructures on DNA and protein basis.

Some minor nitpicks, though. I don't think that the concept of a battery in the classical sense is applicable on this scale. Energy supply will have to be organized in a more biological kind of fashion - just put your nanomachine in some kind of energy gradient, be it thermal or chemical in nature. The first generation of nanomachines will undoubtely be stationary anyway, so you could put them on top of a membrane separating for example a high-proton from a low-proton medium and let them harvest energy from the proton flux along the gradient - again a working concept established in many biological systems, for example bacteria or mitochondria.

For the same reason, I would not be concerned about movement at this stage. Later, though, I don't think it will be as simple as you put it. On the nanoscale, the fluid behavior of gaseous media is completely different from what we know, so your put-in-turbines-and-let-them-fly concept most probably won't work. But, again, we can look to biology - flagella and cilia are quite efficient ways of propulsion in media of relatively high viscosity.

You missed the 15% mortality rate thing

[burgburgburg]

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?