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Nano Safety Worries Scientists More Than Public
Nanotech Coward writes "The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The new report was based on a national telephone survey of American households and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers. It reveals that those with the most insight into a technology with enormous potential — and that is already emerging in hundreds of products — are unsure what health and environmental problems might be posed by the technology."
Well informed scientist see more possible causes for harm than the non-informed general public. This hardly comes as a surprise to me.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
if there is nano pizza for the shutdown
It's pretty easy for scientists to kill the public. Nano stuff seems a bit tougher to kill.
How come I never get cool questions like this?
So they are all worried about grey goo?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
For maximum nano safety, just specify the -B, -N, and -t options.
Oh, wait, you were talking about something else!
My blog
...Because you would hold up the call operator for 40 minutes discussing the benefits of which OS the nanobots should run centred around some kind of car analogy?
I am just glad that the American administration is looking after them. What? Rumsfeld is gone?? now we are in trouble.
Scientists are more worried about a lot of things than the general public. This is not because scientists are worriers, but because the general public is hopelessly ignorant about a lot of things.
I see all this crap about how bad reporters are at science reporting...This is mainly from people who never have to watch their work be dumbed down over the course of days to the point where joe six pack can get some glimmer of meaning from it. Trying to convey anything scientific to the masses is extremely difficult.
The truth of it is, the public, by and large, just doesn't care. They don't want to know. They don't want to make the effort. And if you succeed in enlightening them as to the dangers, then it's all too likely they'll panic and refuse to use anything even close to it, as was the case with nuclear energy.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well this sounds like a serious problem, because the public are actually more of a threat to scientists than any nano-tecnology whatnot.
Nano formulated drugs can get into places that were impossible before. For this same reason, other nano formulated materials may present a severe danger. For example, I wouldn't want particles from the paint on my house to end up crossing the blood brain barrier.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
"The public" worries about what the media tells them to worry about. Did you know everyone's children are going to die from Chinese toys with lead in them? The public does.
Scientists worry about science-related things they think are interesting. Hence, asteroids hitting Earth and nanotech are worried about.
This should surprise no one.
Social scientists are probably worried about the disconnect between the publics' and scientists' thinking though.
Scientist are introverts. Of course the public scares them.
When they talked to scientists with knowledge of nanotechnology, they got meaningful discussion of the issues; but when they interrupted someone's dinner at random and asked "do you have concerns about nanotechnology?", they got hugn up on?
Shocking.
What's with the line of veiled attacks on science of late? First we get some FUD a couple days ago about science bringing us closer to teh end of the world (based on misconceptions about quantum physics and observatino); now this "nanotech is so bad that the people who know about it are even more scared than the public" bull.
If you had taken time to read the article instead of rushing to get the first post, you would know that what's causing surprise is not that scientists see possible causes for harm, but that "The new findings are in stark contrast to controversies sparked by the advent of technologies of the past such as nuclear power and genetically modified foods, which scientists perceived as having lower risks than did the public".
One thing I've learned over the years is that new technology almost never gets any extensive research on safety. It's too expensive and too difficult to predict problems. There are exceptions, of course, such as planes and things that generally involve the safety of hundreds of people.
In most other cases, however, we learn from our own mistakes, through trial and error. If something goes wrong with a car, scientists will see this and hopefully perfect it in the next version.
Same goes with nano technology. You can put a hundred super computers at it and try to predict as many dangers as possible, but in the end, it's gonna cost so much and delay advancements so far that, ultimately, we're better off with the trail and error phase. Things will surely go wrong, people might get hurt, but that's how it's been going on for ages.
Full Tilt
Scientists cautious about new and untested technology. General public clueless about new and untested technology.
Like... WOW! Incredible insight!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When I first read this I thought it meant that scientists were more afraid of Nano technology than they were of people. Either really works, but people aren't THAT scary, well most of the time...
je suis parce que j'aime
As a typical conservative, I need there to be a complete and overwhelming concensus before I'll admit anything science related is actually a threat, like with global warming. As opposed to instances where we can kill human beings, like Iraq.
Stay the course!!!
After all, and I quote, "It was us who scorched the sky."
But then again, I'm a Ford man.
It's all in your nano.
I am a Public Health student currently, and I have been doing some research on this topic, was planning on writing a paper about it, but decided not to for the primary reason that there is little research data available on it and even less on implications from this data! The reason the general public is not concerned with the issue is two-fold.
One, the public becomes concerned with a public health issue when it affects them directly or more commonly when the threat of HOW the issue affects them is conveyed typically BY THE MEDIA! The Media spends very little time on this issue primarily due to its esoteric nature and its extremely low "sexiness" as an issue.
Two, its not a hot topic because there is little exposure from it to the general public. Certain industries and certain populations in these industries are exposed to it and even then, the awareness given to them about it is minimal.
Until nanomaterials are showcased on CNN in a show called Public in Peril: The Coming Nanomaterial Endemic or nanomaterials enter the average everyday workplace and an eight-hour training seminar on their safety comes to a conference room near you, this will be a non-issue as it should be.
The limited research going on is out there though, as it should be:
...and it should be known by now
What? Are you mad? There's no reason for discussion. The answer is obvious. The nanobot OS would be a monolithic unix derivative stripped down to the bare essentials with all drivers statically linked - like a custom Linux or BSD build. Tiny nanobots are like a Mini. You need something that will fit the form factor. You would need something like a a href=http://www.fordvehicles.com/trucks/f150/>Ford F150 to run Windows. Windows Doesn't even enter the nanobot market....
more seriously though, if we built nanobots, and each nanobot ran its own version of an OS, could we count this in marketshare research?... wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yes, fear. Let O'Reilly do a piece on nanotech and terrorism and the numbers will do a 180 and the public calling for a ban on research.
When all else fails, try.
Could publics view of everything as dangerous have anything to do with the quality reporting by the impartial news media we get these days. I think I saw "Staplers, find out how they can harm your children" the other day on CNN.
as a member of the public, welcome our new nanobot overlords.
This is Mork signing off.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The gray goo event already happened, though they got the color wrong. It was actually green, and involved self-replicating nanobots using sunlight to make the atmosphere toxic and kill off most life on the planet.
Some of you might have heard of this Oxygen Catastrophe. Sad times for our planet, indeed.
Some guy (or woman) being nabbed at the 2026 Olympics for use of performance enhancing nanobots...
Ignorance is bliss.
I believe the correct spelling (in the Mork context) is 'Nanu', correct me if i'm wrong
polled could spell "nanotechnology"?
At least 50% of Americans are either to dumb to realize that historically all new technologies have had negative consequences or they are laxy and want an easy fix to things that require work and responsibility.
Personally, I am worried IBM is going to graffiti everything.
The industry has gotten caught lying on way more than one occasion. Numerous internal animal studies show some pretty harmful effects. Combine that with the revolving door of government inspectors going into the same industry they were inspecting after so called retirement and pension, and you start to smell a rat after the 50th time that comes out in the news. And when talking about the FDA or USDA, this is de rigeur, it's a racket for rubber stamping industry just like the FCC is for the telcos and big broadcasters and just like the patent and copyright office is for patent trolls and the MAFIAA. I mean,they have to keep passing laws to try and protect whistleblowers! Why is that? Really, answer that question, why do they have to protect whistleblowers if it is "safe"?
Remember, scientists can be greedy normal humans same as everyone else. Industry scientists claimed any number of now banned pesticides were "safe" for example.
I'm into agriculture and follow this subject a lot,(enough to comment here and state I stay as far away from GM as possible, along with most chemicals) so I'll give you a tip, take anything the big agcos and chemcos say along with their government sock puppets with a huge heaping shovel full of salt about how "safe" stuff is. And that goes for grant/industry driven ag colleges as well.
People have every reason in the world to be pretty suspicious of genetically modified food, plus it is just a completely bad idea, patenting and creating "closed source" vendor lock-in food and dicking around with the food supply where a little "whoops-gotcha" in the code can cause huge problems is just a bad idea.
Your puny software operating system or application with a bug, causes something bad to happen, who cares, extremely minor, reload it, patch it, but you CAN'T DO THAT with the planets food supply or water supply WHEN they fuck up, and being humans, they WILL fuck up. You-coders-techies-no matter how much money thrown at it or how many letters after your name- can't even guarantee and warranty computer code, all of it is distributed with the snakeoil caveat emptor disclaimer EULAs, and that stuff is easy compared to biology, so somehow magically you can guarantee chimeric creations?? Are you NUTS?
And before any of the COMPLETE TOTAL IDIOTS chime in with "we've been making hybrids forever" nonsense, let me point out, NOT WITH CROSS SPECIES CHIMERIC HYBRIDS WITH INJECTED DNA. That doesn't happen in nature at any sort of rapid pace or on a large scale, and when it does, say like with the flu virus on a teeny tiny barely changed scale, it tends to be OMG serious bad fukken news when it occurs.
THINK about it rationally given the actual empirical evidence you have to look at, the stuff in the history books so far and in the breaking scandals news over the past few decades. Ever hear of agent orange and blue? Whole flock of dudes in white coats claimed it was safe, and not chemical warfare. uh huh. A few hundred thousand sick or dead vets and vietnamese civilians beg to differ after a little long range "real world testing". And the dioxins in there are now a major threat in everyones water supply, go look it up yourself. Here's another, MTBE to make gas "cleaner", now contaminated a lot of aquifers.
Guess what? Scientists can fuck up too, or be paid off enough to sort of "ignore" results that don't fit with the "business model". Happens all the time.
Keep it up with the GM food/seeds and you are going to see a planetary scale catastrophe.
I can't say when, but based on human beings 100% complete track record of having serious bad things happen with every other tech, you can guarantee it will happen. Now "dead" tech, machinery, electronics, oh well, you can ignore it,fix the mistakes and move on, with living tech, spread by the wind and water?? Hubris and arrogance with biology is going to kill millions if not billions of people eventually. It won't matter if 99% of all the new creations turn out to be harmless, it's that 1% that is guaranteed to be a mistake which will bork the whole system. Guaranteed, it's gonna happen, and your one box of stashed away cheetos isn't going to fix things.
I think you should look at the definition of Eugenics before you start talking about animal cloning because it doesn't apply to that...Unless you're being cute and saying that all animals (including humans) are equal, in which case I think you'll find that you're in complete agreement with PETA, which is, I doubt, what you want.
As for the rest, you can shove your trollish delusions up your ass until I actually say any of those things.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The new findings are in stark contrast to controversies sparked by the advent of technologies of the past such as nuclear power and genetically modified foods, which scientists perceived as having lower risks than did the public
I think that's revisionist history.
At a similar point in time (don't forget, we're a long way from real nanotech), the public was similarly clueless and complacent about both of these. It was scientists, like these ones, who first started talking about dangers, and it wasn't until a few populists (some scientists, some with other backgrounds) really started pushing the issues that the public noticed. The massive overreaction phase won't hit until there's a big splashy problem.
Nanotech worries scientists more than the cows (general public) of our society because society is over-populated with idiots that either don't care about the world around them or unable to comprehend it. So, it's no shock to this amateur scientist.
I'm not surprised at all that scientists found the iPod Nano dangerous, especially after this incident.
i think the concern comes from the fact that silver is
... ni more bacteria.
... sewage. ...?
an anti-bacterial agent.
if you atomize silver and add it to all and everything
i dont know percentage of households without access to a sewage treatment plant, but
many households relay on a sewage tank with bacteria to break down
add some atomised silver(*) and the personal mini-sewage treatment plant will prolly
stop working
(*)1 kg silver atomised (or NANO-rised) has a HUGe surface.
Thou shalt not mock the most holy car analogies.
That's like fixing a mazda with renault parts. Blasphemy!
Nanotechnology is still in it's infancy. There are a lot of things we don't know. Ask an average scientist for an opinion about the possibility of unplanned consequences in a relatively immature area of science and he will answer "I don't know". Ask any non-scientist the same question and the average non-scientist will have some sort of opinion, usually based on "If I haven't heard anything bad, it must be OK".
This survey is comparing apples to oranges and trying to draw some inference from essentially a non-committal response from the scientific community.
Leave it to the uninformed media to read doom and gloom into something so mundane...Risks and nanotechnology: the public is more concerned than experts and industry - p67
Michael Siegrist, Arnim Wiek, Asgeir Helland & Hans Kastenholz
The first correspondence in the February issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Sorry you have to pay for the journal to read the actual article.
I strongly encourage anyone interested in this topic to read up on the work done by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. I am surprised to find no links to this website previously posted. The CRNano group has been thinking about precisely this sort of issue, and even has articles about the disparity between public and scientific understanding of the topic. CRNano is primarily, but not exclusively, focussed on Molecular Manufacturing (Wikipedia Definition of MM).
The stated purpose of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (from their web site) is:
The mission of CRN is to: 1) raise awareness of the benefits, the dangers, and the possibilities for responsible use of advanced nanotechnology; 2) expedite a thorough examination of the environmental, humanitarian, economic, military, political, social, medical, and ethical implications of molecular manufacturing; and 3) assist in the creation and implementation of wise, comprehensive, and balanced plans for responsible worldwide use of this transformative technology.
Because nanotechnology (particularly MM) is a new and cross-disciplinary science even most SCIENTISTS have a poor understanding of the associated risks, benefits, and issues. Few scientists have the required background in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering to properly appreciate the current state and likely future implications of advanced nanotechnology. I suggest that many of the scientists polled on this topic (see the article) are probably not much better informed on this topic than the general public. I hope awareness of nanotechnology and the many practical and ethical issues surrounding it increases, both among scientists and amoung the general public. This discussion is a good start.
The bees were the first victims of unregulated nanodust emissions. With the extra dust stuck to the pollen they are collecting, they can barely fly. The few bees now around are bigger.
I guess the average person doesn't notice the change in the color of the sunsets, either.
The article talks about "nanotechnology," which I assume includes both bots and materials and even manufacturing methods. That's what the word "technology" encompasses as far as I'm concerned. But they are all very very different things and the article makes absolutely no distinction. Talking about "nanotechnology safety" is like talking about "information technology safety," it's basically nonsense. Maybe you can force it if you want, but why bother when you can say "nanomaterial safety" or "nanobot safety" which are easily understood as "materials made with special microscopic techniques" or whatever and "tiny microscopic robots."
I'm currently taking a nanophysics module as part of my physics degree, and we have been required to read a UK government report on the development of nanotechnology, and there is plenty in there to worry me even as an unqualified scientist.
Public awareness of nanotechnology is low. 29% of Britons (who, no offense, are likely to be more informed than Americans) have heard of the term and only 19% could offer a definition. Of those who knew what it was, 68% thought it would improve life whilst 4% thought it would make life worse
I've read stuff in this report though, that if it were widely known could well cause widespread panic, and leave nanotechnology about as trusted as GM crops. Nanoparticles, by virtue of their vastly increased surface area and the beginnings of quantum effects, can have very different properties than their bulk material counterparts. Bulk copper, for example, is soft and malleable. Copper particles less than 50nm or so across are very hard crystals.
Toxicity can change too - http://www.physorg.com/news63466994.html - there are some indications that substances which are benign in bulk are dangerous as nanoparticles. Of course, nobody knows because the people using these nanoparticles in products like suncreen haven't bothered to test them properly. They haven't bothered because its expensive, and the legislation hasn't caught up with the technology yet. Bulk and nanoparticles are for the most part treated as identical.
When the oh so trusting public I mentioned before find out about this, and find out that the people who knew about it didn't do enough to inform them, and the people using these substances in products didn't bother to do any real testing on them, they are going to be really pissed off. People will tolerate greedy corporations, corrupt politicians and idiotic media - but they have been known to get off their arses and complain when they discover they could've been rubbing carcinogens on their children's skin.
http://www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htmIts long, but its nicely bulletpointed so it isn't difficult to get through
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Even apart from funding, it is very difficult for someone to acknowledge the downside to the work they are doing. After 5 years in the lab would you like to acknowledge that your developments could be a Bad Idea? Scientists are human too, well kinda.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm sorry to break this to you....but you're part of the public. As are the scientists, for that matter.
Or did you mean to say "all those ignorant peons whom I am so much superior to" instead of "the public"?
If scientists are worried and ill informed about the effects, I just hope they take there time and work it all out before they start applying this science on a major level.
I bet if this happened before people started burning fossil fuels to generate power the world would be a nicer less chaotic place.
This is, of course, a total lie. The opposite was clearly the real truth -- the machines "scorched the sky."
Think about it.
My children just lick the lead house paint. So I don't have to buy expensive Chinese toys.
My post was an implied criticism of the media, not the public. The news media are corrupt and their reports are misleading such that they are useless on average. The public has no reliable sources of information. There are many sources, none can be relied on completely. It's a sad situation, and it's not the public's fault.
It's fairly clear that scientists have different interests than the public though. If you polled the two groups, you'd find that to be true.
Gotcha. Sorry 'bout the confusion.
All I know is nano suits kick ass.
When they see it on Oprahesque shows on daytime TV, then it will wake up your generic couch potato. I can still remember the "Three Mile Island" nuclear non-issue and the buzz repeated "reporting" caused in the couch potato metaverse.
Stop watching "The China Syndrome".
to get protection from nano-bots... use a pico-safety-schield today !!!
Bozos worried about nuclear test fallout and anthrax and guys in caves in Afghanistan wanting to take away US "freedom" (haha) and Arabs trying to hold us hostage by keeping "America's petroleum lifeline" to themselves (GREEDY BASTARDS!!!).
Well, you get the idea.
Strangely. I've come back to this page after some surfing & can't remember what is about ( there is no indication on the page - try it ).
Usually, it is ignorance that breeds fear.
- Scientific? Tell that to the Amish, or to Fundamentalist Christians. They may not WANT their children to grow up to be skeptical and ultra-rational.
- Good-natured? Not everyone thinks that being polite and demure and smiling like an idiot ALL the time is necessarily a good thing. Some people happen to think that there's nothing wrong with some adversarial tendencies. Some of the best people I know are downright surly. Since when do YOU get to decide that they are genetically "bad"?
It is inherently wrong to try to control the fundamental instincts and behavioral tendencies of other people without their consent. You might as well say that it's a good idea to put psychoactive drugs in the water supply.Now, if you want to offer me a pill or some gene-therapy or something that I can take which will make me smarter and more good-natured, sign me the fuck up, because that sounds great. But if you want to decide for me? You'll find out just how useful my adversarial, belligerent side can be.
The gloss misquotes the article in exactly the way to cause the effect we are talking about: the gloss says "scientists are more worried than the general public..." but the article's title is "scientists are more concerned...". The "King Kong" theme is that we tend to fear what we don't understand, but that's just what scientists don't do: they study what they don't understand. The survey merely established that most scientists haven't thought about the safety issues much yet. No reason to; it's like worrying about a rocket exploding at liftoff, when you are working on the aerodynamics of a single fin in a wind-tunnel. When you are designing for a prototype that will actually burn fuel, then is a good time to worry about exploding on lift-off. --yoof
Everybody here seems to be very hostile to GM crops. I hold highly those who have been gracious enough to point at flaws in technology behind GM crops. I detest, however, folks who try to discredit crop genetic engineering for no other reason but corporations that develop GM seeds. I have a question for these people: "Is it Monsanto, Bayer, or DuPont that you hate or their scientists, the hardworking and courageous men and women, who work their hearts and souls out to develop technologies that potentially can benefit humanity? I am from Africa (please don't hurl racial epithets at me) and I have witnessed kids die of hunger because every time the so-called indigenous seeds are planted, they yield nothing. I don't intend to say GM crops are the solution to global food problems. No. But they have their place in alleviating food insecurity. It's disingenuous for anyone to dismiss crop genetic engineering offhand. I have written as much on GM crops in my blog, GMO Africa. I am a strong supporter of GM crops because I believe the world can't afford to bracket off new technologies, including agricultural biotechnology, from taking off.