Slashdot Mirror
Facing the Dangers of Nanotech
bethr writes "Technology Review has a Q&A with Andrew Maynard, the science advisor for the Woodrow Wilson International Center's nanotechnology project regarding the dangers of nanomaterials and why we have to act now." From the article: "Individual experiments have indicated that if you develop materials with a nanostructure, they do behave differently in the body and in the environment. We know from animal studies that very, very fine particles, particles with high surface area, lead to a greater inflammatory response than the same amount of larger particles. We also know that they can enter the lining of the lungs and get through to the blood and enter other organs. There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier."
Arrrgh! help! they're in my brain!
Haven't we had nanotechnology for ages?
Didn't I just read something about ancient swords using nanotubes?
liqbase
... worthy to be afraid of.
Nanotech: The Asbestos of the Future.
As Mork would say, "Nano, Nano!"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That isn't exactly what is usually called "gray goo" by nanotech critics, but nanostructures entering the brain comes pretty close.
Since assembly-based nano isn't anywhere near yet, whenever news articles use the term 'nano', what they really mean is something more like 'chemical' or 'molecular'. TFA is no exception, really. So when he says 'There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier.' we can easily translate this as saying 'There is some evidence that molecules can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier.' Yeah, some molecules can pass the blood-brain barrier. What's his point? It's all nano-FUD, IMO.
All that the producers of nanomaterials need to do is put a cartoon Camel on the box, and all the cool kids will be breathing nanonmaterials.
They're perfectly safe, and prevent acne.
Coinciding with the recent Greg Bear questions as /., Blood Music is an excellent short story by him that offers once such nightmare scenario. Friggin awesome btw.
Oh crap!
You mean you can see the Experimental threading indicators?
Thats bad - it means the nano threading weaved into the webpage has escaped and made its way into your optic nerve.
In reality I don't know and was wondering the same myself.
liqbase
Lets see, they advocate the government looking over the shoulder and using Wikipedia to determine danger.
First, there is a problem with governmental idiots in charge of something they don't understand.
Two, I don't buy Wikipedia as an authoritative source. While it is source, it could be a start point, not an end point.
And of course this would not apply to marketing hyped products -- the nano-tech car wax and nano-tech hair shampoo; Right???
Fight Spammers!
I've been working with nanotech for years, and I haven't noticed any brain damage-amage-amage-amage-amage.
stuff |
can someone forward me the memo about today being Nanotech day on /.?
It will happen, you know it.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
I for one welcome our small nanoverlords
this amount of stupidity usually requires a group of people
This seems to be a rising hobby, alarmism as a way of raising your personal profile. It happens every few years with each new technology, and the facts are no deterrant.
The facts in this case are that the natural environment is FULL of nanoparticles of all sizes --- we live in a sea of them. Nature doesn't have any personal preference for particles of any given size.
To say that something we manufacture could be dangerous is fine, but singling out nanoparticles is just plain silly. And yes, materials of all kinds change their properties depending on particle size. Again, singling out nanoparticles for this honour is more about alarmism than about objectivity.
...than a packet of greased up Yoda Dolls on a Saturday night at Karl Rove's place when Jim Jeff comes over. Wootz!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If there are "dangers" associated with them, they will be PERFECT for the DoD to pickup on and investigate.
what would be better than a bomb that goes off and you breathe in particles that can easily penetrate your organs
I for one am shocked that The Magic School Bus conviently decided not to warn us of these dangers of nano-scaled foreign objects travelling through the human body :(
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
The Widipedia idea is something that has been talked about. And I think that either that or something like that is a very exciting idea. Of course you've always got the issue of validating the information which is there. (emphasis mine)
Second:
That's where you come down to talking about "oversight" rather than regulations. (some content removed) So there are ways of dealing with challenges in the near future that don't necessarily mean resorting to regulation.
Given Andrew Maynard's actual comments I don't see why you have to call him an idiot. In many ways he agrees with you.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
they don't know how to do experiments on a test database, but instead do it on the live one. Typical.
a guy that deals with nanotubes is going to have a difficult time understanding the relative size of a problem, and blows it all out of proportion. Nanotubes are small... you know- kinda like atoms, we don't worry about atoms do we? silly.
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
Progress requires risk. Deal.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
OK, I'm through digressing. Back to the point.
Andrew Maynard is concerned that "very, very fine particles with high surface area, lead to a greater inflammatory response...". (emphasis mine)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
For precisely the same reason that nano sized particles will be revolutionary to the world of pharmaceuticals, they may prove to be toxic in other applications.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I for one welcome our experimental threading overlords!
Nature is replete with examples where scale matters. Insect-scale airfoils don't work particularly well. Jumbo jet-scale insects wouldn't fly, either. At the molecular level, flagella give great propulsion in fluids, but the same wouldn't hold at the macroscopic level.
The same is true in biology. I remember having read a study done at NASA on the effect of iron nanoparticles in lungs. (Alas, I can't seem to find the link anymore.) They concluded that at the nano scale, the iron particles could escape the normal protections and remain in the lungs (in the interstitium and cells themselves), where they could collect and have a toxic effect, including diminished lung function. (The test rats became lethargic, etc.) All this at exposure levels that wouldn't be considered toxic at other scales.
I've seen similar research on sunscreen. Zinc oxide particles are great protecting at UVA and UVB. However, at large scale, they're quite visible and hard to blend in. Make them smaller, and that problem goes away, but they get absorbed deeper into the skin. Make them smaller still, and it's quite possible that they'll be absorbed into the cells themselves, leading to new potential health effects. (e.g., does zinc oxide become carcinogenic when they remain in the cells for too long? Does the motion into the cells increase the likelihood of reactive oxygen species (free radicals) accumlating inside the cells, rather than outside?)
I'm not a biochemist or a biologist (I'm a biomathematician), so I don't have the answers to these questions. But it's clear that scale really does matter, and it needs to be considered. Is the danger overhyped? Possibly, or maybe not. That's why it needs to be studied. But it's going to be important to understand these effects when we move from the low levels that occur naturally to the high levels that will occur in human-made materials and products. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
BWAHAHA...SNOOOOOORT!!! Cough, cough, cough.
What is that you ask? The sound of a Diet Code Red Mountain Dew going through my nose and onto my keyboard.
Thanks a lot.
This is very erie... Anyone read Prey by Michael Crichton? I think the developers of this nanotechnology should read this before proceeding. Interestingly, the bibliography of this book is quite extensive...
Just call Wesley, he'll crush them.
Programmers in mirror are brighter than they appear
I played a thought experiment with a very smart fellow. The goal of the experiment was to come up with a safe way to create self replicating nanites that could cure cancer. We had 1 nanite that would cure cancer, but it was, of course, slow. The goal was to create enough to heal an entire body.
.001% mutation that's still 100,000 self replicating mistakes. If even one of those 100,000 mistakes is a mutation that just doesn't turn off self replication you now have a very bad problem.
So the best way to make more nanites is to have the nanites make more of themselves. Seems pretty straight forward... only everytime we go about doing it we run into this little problem.
Mutations.
So we build these guys to start replicating and to stop replicating when we want them to... but when you make a billion of something you end up with some odd mutations. Even if you are talking about
Released, this nanite could theoretically convert the earth (see "grey goo") into a giant ball of itself.
Now I know this thread is going to be long, because so many of you very smart people will have so many smart ideas about how to make this safe. I'm glad you have these ideas and I'm glad you're voicing them. Some of them might even work.
What scares the hell out of me is that you're not the people working on this.
So essentially your argument is:
There exists some molecules that already enter the blood-brain barrier without problems. Therefor all molecules entering the blood-brain barrier have no problems. One could prove anything (including known falsehoods) using that kind of logic.
What I read in the article was that when we create very very fine particles out of substances they behave differently in biological organisms than they do when they aren't in very very small particles. We really have no information on how these very fine particles might behave in biological organisms, so we really should be more cautious in including them in food products, or anything else people might injest since they really haven't been tested yet.
AccountKiller
I thought that people investigated BECAUSE the body responded diffentently on nanotechnological materials. And also BECAUSE materials combined and shaped in unusual ways got unusual results.
P.S. The nanotechnology hype is over. It has been for some time now. All nanotech products I've seen so far is an anti-fog, anti-rain spray for your cars widscreen. Just like the dot-com bubble it didn't live up to the high expectations that (mostly American) scientists created.
the bloody hell?
am i the only one starting to suspect this is a psychological "experiment", rather than a technical one?
Released, this nanite could theoretically convert the earth (see "grey goo") into a giant ball of itself.
There's this little problem with replication called "energy", and the laws of thermodynamics. Making order out of disorder requires energy to be expended. Exactly where is all the energy going to come from to turn everything into "grey goo"?
AccountKiller
you can get that in diet??? Man I miss code red. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
it's a very very small trap!
There are 2 researchers, in particular, who are studying the effects of nanoparticles on human body: Stefano Montanari and Antonietta Gatti. They showed, among various human tissues "contaminated" by nanoparticles, that nanoparticles could invade sperm, the lymphatic system and even penetrate the cell nucleus.
Unfortunately they're not widely known, as their work, outside Italy.
If you can understand Italian try to read here:
http://www.nanodiagnostics.it/
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopatologia
the fact that nanotech is here to stay and corporate fat cats will all be stampeding like cattle to market this stuff when it comes of age, with no thought for safety concerns, only PROFIT; it behooves geekdom to apply pressure for researching nanotech on human health NOW, before the horse breaks out of the stable and we're stuck dealing with the health issues after the fact...ass backwards, like usual.
sorry for the run on sentence.
This is true...I hear Solid Snake never fully recovered...
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I remember the 1950s, sounds like the atomic bomb again, radiation poising, evil mad science, nature-gone-wild ... sounds like more B-grade scifi movies are on their way, or the new-conservative plutocrats are justified in keep everyone from behaving responsibly by not having a gun, stem-cell, nuke .... NanNO Borg the monster was a human infected by terrorist spread necrotic-nano-bots from Mars.
...) who are continually gucken up the world for humanity.
If we are going to destroy our species, I wish would just get it done. Anything is better than accepting domination by fear-mongering idiots in charge (Neo-Nazi, Neoconservative, Neo/Pseudo-Christian/Moslem/Jew
Give me liberty, or give me death, from the all KnowWhatsBestForYou powerful of this world.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
...doth not an article make. Won't someone PLEASE think of the *science* ?!
Caveat Utilitor
Consider asbestos: it's harmless in a large piece. But once that piece starts crumbling, asbestos tends to split lengthwise into thinner and thinner fibers (rather than shorter and shorter ones). Breathe those in and you might end up dying an agonising death.
So yes, we do need to study nanoeffects of materials, even when we already know the bulk effects of those same materials.
The interview in TFA is a bit non-committal, but one very good point was made: a set of "best practises" should be drawn up to help bridge the gap between today's exploration of the possibilities of nanotechnology - and the hindsight that will surely come in the future.
Paid Q&A/Research
We are at war with Euroasia, we've always been at war with Euroasia.
Is the danger overhyped? Possibly, or maybe not. That's why it needs to be studied.
I'm old enough to remember something very similar to this back when gene splicing first became practical. Recombinant technology had a lot of hype around its promise, while at the same time there was an equal amount of hype about its dangers. Depending on which "expert" you were listening to, it was either going to solve all our problems or wipe humanity off the planet.
The compromise was to put stringent safeguards on it. Twenty years later, we can look back and see that a lot of them were unnecessary, and that much of the hype was overblown on both sides. I think we're going to see something similar arising from nanotechnology. Yes, there's a lot of promise, and yes, there are some dangers. Until we better understand the technology, it's better to put in some safeguards, with the idea in mind that we can always relax them or tighten them.
It's always instructive to look back, and to take some lessons from the past. Banning a technology outright because of fear doesn't work. Someone will eventually use it. At the same time, embracing a technology unreservedly also doesn't work. There are many examples of it blowing up in someone's face after-the-fact. It's not anti-technology to be aware of potential dangers and to take steps to mitigate them as you move forward. But neither should the dangers prevent you from moving forward.
I'm old enough to remember something very similar to this back when gene splicing first became practical. Recombinant technology had a lot of hype around its promise, while at the same time there was an equal amount of hype about its dangers.
/. today on carbon nanotubes in ancient steel, and of course the first discovery of exotic carbon allotropes was in smoke, which is not exactly a rare substance. This suggests that some forms of nanoparticles have been around in the environment for a long time. However, it does not follow from this that naturally occuring nanoparticles are similar to the ones we are trying to create. Some, like carbon nanotubes and buckyballs, are unlikely to cause harm. But given their ability to infiltrate the body's natural defenses there needs at least to be careful assessment of new nanosubstances before any are allowed to released into the environment.
There was actually a voluntary suspension of recombinant DNA research for a short time back in the '70's. Everyone started doing it again when the truth became clear: recombination happens in nature all the time, and the mechanism was such that naturally occuring recombination was doing all the things that scientists wanted to do. Given this, it was felt there was little risk of uncontrolled side-effects. It is worth adding that this is different from believing that there is little risk (social, economic or environmental) from GMOs specifically designed to cause harm to others for the profit of some, like those containing Monsanto's Terminator gene.
The situation with nanoparticles is a little more ambiguous. There was as story on
Nano-materials are nothing more than large molecules, after all, and you wouldn't want people releasing large amounts of potentially deadly substances into the environment in the fond hope that they won't harm anyone with sufficient money to sue.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
... my nano bits?
OMG... never mind!
We already know this... as evidenced by this previous slashdot article... what could be more dangerous than a sward made of carbon nano tubes?
2 54.shtml
http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/11/16/2348
And that's exactly the point - slow down cowboy until you have some idea of what you're doing. The recombinant DNA restrictions worked exactly as designed - people slowed down a bit and studied potential downsides, worked on mitigation strategies (P level confinement - now widely used on our War on Terrorism(R)(TM)(Patent Pending by Johnson's wax)).
Hopefully real nanotechnology will turn out to be more than marketing and venture capital hype, but it behooves us to look at potential pitfalls as well as potential progress. Besides, you should be able to get some pretty good anti terrorism funding by doing that kind of research these days.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I, for one, welcome our Go-Pants Nano-Technology Overlords.
I, for one, welcome our brain infesting, body-controlling overlords with their carbon nanoswords. w00tz!
Nanoparticles and nanostructured materials have been around for a long, long time. Just last night, there was an article posted here on how carbon nanotubes were a key component of Damascus steel. Nanoparticles are produced in many natural chemical reactions, in all biological systems and any time something burns. My point is that simply being a nanoparticle does not make something dangerous.
New materials, or old materials put to new uses should absolutely be tested for safety, whether that new material is a new pesticide or a new nanoparticle. I don't think there's any reason to treat nanostructured materials any different from a new drug, new pesticide or other such dangerous chemical.
a bomb that goes off and small (but not nano) pieces of jagged metal (let's call them 'shrapnel') get shot through your body at very high speed. pretty revolutionary, eh?
...
...
Back in the eighties, a friend of mine quit a job (programmer) with a defense contractor, when he found out:
(A) The firm was making cluster bombs
(B) from dark-red plastic, because
(C) plastic isn't revealed by x-rays, and red is hard for surgeons to see during surgery.
The point was not to kill large numbers of people, but to injure large numbers of people in such a manner as to require lots of expensive medical personnel, thus winning the war by attrition.
Immoral? That's a judgement call.
Cost-effective? The defense contractor thought so.
-kgj
-kgj
Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these ... things .. these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence?! What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?
Exactly
Nanotech schmanotech. Chemistry is chemistry is chemistry. Engineers pretending to be chemists, bah!
Don't believe me? Stick your finger in a container of 50% sodium hydroxide to see what happens, never mind that it is dissolving the glass container it is in... (a Teflon container will hold it)
Or try ingesting 250-500 g (1-2 hits) of lysergic acid diethylamide and wait and see what happens when that gets to the brain... hehehe.
This is not news. Chemistry has always been a dangerous field. One must be very well educated and aware to avoid injury or illness.
"Nanotech" sounds cooler than chemistry so I guess it is news...
Some kinds of nano-particles may be dangerous but we shouldn't get the wrong impression that Nanotechnology is itself dangerous. Similarly, microscopic particles can be dangerous but we don't think of micro-scale technologies such as Microprocessors as being dangerous.
...welcome my position as your nano-overlord. When the nano powders don't catch fire during processing, they make great weapons. However, I make the weapons and only give them to my loyal minions. Now is a good time to swear loyalty.
as a student in a nanotech degree, I have to laugh at the conjectures here. all of these comments about "grey goo" and self replicating "nanites" are pure alarmism. Drexler himself doesn't believe it's possible. and as for all of this screaming about the control of nanomaterials, powder technologies are only a very small part of the whole nanotech research area. most of the research that I've come in to contact with has been focused not on powders but on surfaces and coatings, or biomedical sources, which is where all the money is and Prey is horribly bad. the situation described, as well as many of the properties attributed to nanomachines, is complete fiction. problem is, it's believeable to non-scientists. when talking about nanotechnolgy to non-scientists, I either get "what is that" or "you'll kill us all, grey goo." it's actually a damaging book, in that it actively attempts to hobble a science before it was anywhere near that level of complexity.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
I agree, only a known can be addressed/controlled/manipulated, and fear of the unknown can cause a potentially catastrophic unknown. I feel, that many Luddite and/or religious leaders create a far greater potential to cause the extinction of the human species, then anything theoretical/applied mathematicians, scientist, engineers ... may do accidentally and/or in an uncontrolled environment.
IOW, curiosity killed the cat, while a lack or repression of human curiosity will destroy everything that humans are and will be.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The first thing to keep in mind is that - due to the amount of hype being poured and finaced into this little bubble-about-to-burst-once-it-gets-its-financial-
"We know from animal studies that very, very fine particles, particles with high surface area, lead to a greater inflammatory response than the same amount of larger particles."
Translation : "I chopped a line of meth a little finer than usual before coming out here, and it burned more."
See - precipitating a statistically-monomolecular crystal is an old, old chemists parlor trick, used mostly for either amusement - "yes, this small brooch has, statistically, exactly ONE molecule of sapphire under the plastic! Just one, not more, not less!"...
This is no more "1337 n4n0t3k" any more than "HTML-without-even-jscript" qualifies as "I r ur h4x0r g0d."
Read : "After snorting finely-powdered meth, I then proceeded to vaporize a little crack."
Same principle. How the @#$^% do these people think this is "news??"
Every single soluable molecule becomes a disassociate, monomolecular ion in solution. This is not new, this is not remarkable, this is X,000-BC technology.
From the amateur hobbyists perspective, it doesn't really count as nanotech until you engineer the flippin' machine one atom or so at a time, and intelligently at that.
The grad student's trick of designing a castle, or their initials, or whatever, in a giant freakin' molecular polycyclic structure?
Nanotech, albeit nonfunctional amusement.
"Dude, I chopped my coke 'till it was fluffy?"
Not nanotech.
Simple.
~sigh~
Much like "herbal supplements," overfunded hype makes bullshit out of even the most interesting things.
Step 1 : pick a molecule that binds to a specific receptor of localized nature; the CB1 cannabinoid receptor, for instance, is almost exclusively contained in the CNS, while the CB2 provides most of the body-side anandamide operations, I believe.
Step 2 : halogenate a random carbon. How do you do this? Boil it in chlorine, bromine, hydrochloric acid, what have one. Bonus points if it has something easily-substitutable, like an aromatic group (X2 + (FeX2 or AlX3), where "X" is any halogen) or a carboxyl group with a cute little beta carbon (HX + RCOOH)
Step 3 : rinse in a reduced metal whose nucleus is heavy enough to have a desireable half-life...
Mind you - not only is this probably already heavily frowned upon by most international law, qualifying as both an unlawful chemical/pharmacological and a radiologically pollutant weapon designed to spread terror...
Nanotechnology (n) : the utilization of the techniques of manufacturing Really Good Drugs(tm) to implement the ideas you had while on those Really Good Drugs(tm).
...and three weeks of manic frenzy later, my molecules of crack cocaine had robotic arms.
...finally, halogenate the last carbon... if my vague memory serves, HS2Cl2 tends to show preference for halogenation of the terminal carbon of a carboxolic acid...
...and this is where the fun comes in. "Crack," e.g. freebase coke, is benzoic acid ecognovimide. You can do this with anything with a phenyl group (the benzene of benzoic acid), or use a different coupling mechanims...
...take two mols of your extremely-modified carboxolic acid with a halogen on the terminal carbon, one mol of your aromatic "body" of the beast, and a dash of a lewis acid catalyst, such as aluminum chloride...
...a bit of heat and stirring later, it'll have these long organic "arms" coming off the side, complete with carboxolic "claw" for the reversable "grabbing" of alkaline groups... and here's the best part...
...in distilled water, the nitrate and the amine groups will try (desperately) to salt with one another -distorting the bond angles and "contracting" the robotic arm... but in saline solution, it will be slightly more likely to "salt" with the electrolyte - extending or "relaxing" the robotic arm...
...and that, my friends, is how you make a series of crack-cocaine molecules with user-controllable robotic arms... or, any other organic group one wants to bind them to. For the really, really, REALLY bored - instead of binding to a phenyl group, you can just wash the end precursor in sodium hydroxide to form the terminal alcohol, and cook with H2SO4 to create long fibers of electrolyte-reactive polymer, which is far more useful, actually, than "robocrack"...
...and now you know some Really Important Things(tm), such as the fact that "(rti)" stands for "Random text inside"... or, that this is how those "burnout druggies" that your mom warned you not to become are ruling your world when they're not programming computers... or...
...nonetheless - I know how to make the "actual nanotech worthy to be afraid of," and it's not anything I posted in this thread. I feel the world would be a safer place if I posted simple nuclear instructions in easy-to-understand arabic, than if I started broadcasting the recipie, structure, or principles of the crap, which is why this is instead a complete recipie for electrolyte-reactive polymer fiber, which is "mostly harmless," and whose use is governed as far as I'm concerned wholly under the GPL.
...and as a final random offtopic... the crap in the article doesn't count as nanotech in the average hobbyists book, either. It's a field driven by geekdom on the molecular-hacking level - and "making a fine precipitate" is downright boring (and archaic - dissolve salt, add alcohol)... and more importantly, does not have robotic arms, legs, sensors, or spaceguns which would really turn a geek on.
;)
If you'd like to know how to do this, it's pretty easy, actually.
Mine a random long-chain organic acid from, say, flax-seed oil.
Next, you need to put in more work than any chemist would want to do... form the amine of the first carbon (HCl + RCOOH -> (R-1)CClCOOH + NH3), the nitroalkane or carboxolic side-chain of the second, the amine of the third, etc...
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Have fun in your basement, kiddies - though like the GPL says, ya do it at your own risk...
Now, if you'll pardon me - I, for one, welcome the challenge of designing our eventual nanorobotic overlords.
And Strict enforcement of critical safey regulation. This is of course said in the same breath as the acknowledgement that we live in a world where people get away with illegally dumping every kind of toxic chemical horror (particularly in third world contries.)
It's true that nano tubes can do serious biological damage, it's also true that by simply adding a terminating metal ion, those same tubes lose their biological danger. We need to make certain that we come up with sane and safe ways to create, use, and dispose of nanomaterials. This is no different than the thousands of toxic and carcenogenic materials we produce by the millions of tons today, and it's going to be a bigger problem tomorrow as new chemicals are created daily.
This is an engineering problem, and only becomes a social problem when people inspired by greed, decide that the cost of cutting corners is worth the occassional harm or death afflicted upon strangers. We as a society need to create strong rules, with stiff punishment for breaking the rules. After that it's simply and engineering problem.
Genda B.
Rick Smalley is the guy who created Buckyballs. He won the Nobel for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Smalley
Rick Smalley would have breathed a lot of nanotube dust in during his life. He died of leukemia following non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
No proof, just anecdote.
we're bathed in nanoparticles every second: they are called dust