Damning all nanomaterials would be damned silly
We need to look seriously at nanoparticle risks, not invent a nanohazard sign to stick on everything.
When a fire at the chemistry department of the University of Texas, Austin, several years ago required firefighters to enter the labs, they were horrified to discover that there were inflammable substances inside. The department briefly faced the threat of having to label every door with warnings to that effect ("Danger: this chemistry lab contains ethanol").
Read Philip Ball's column here.
Comments
It is encouraging to see the WWF being reminded of the scientificly obvious , but what can be done to encourage them to state it in their advertising ?
Since most elements, toxic or not, exist at part per billion or higher ambient concentrations in wildlife and pristine environments alike , many cherished species would appear at risk of being labled hazardous by the very organizations to which we donate to assure their survival. Since a part per trillion means roughly a trillion atoms per gram, perhaps Nature can undertake to persuade the WWF of the enormous medical benefits of ambient exposure to real world geochmistry relative to the expense of homeopathy.
Of course that might lead to litigeous homeopaths suing America's EPA and UNEP to reduce all pollution to subtherapeutic levels , lest a prescription evironment ensue, greatly complicating the Drug War. It remains to be seen if clean room technology and zone refining can combine to produce the hyperpure placebos needed to test the legal and therapeutic hypotheses that might arise from such a contingency .
Posted by: Russell Seitz | October 18, 2006 06:22 AM
Automobile catalytic converters are a massive source of toxic (heavy metal) airborne respirable microparticles. Millions of reproductive age adults are exposed for an hour or more 200+ times/year to twice daily huge pulses. Where are the Enviro-whiners?
Every beach everywhere must be regulated and fined for respirable crystalline silica dust. Water is a deadly hazard to Hispanic children. There is a big International Warning Orange label on my silica gel bucket saying so - in Spanish.
¡Aviso! Niños pueden caer adentro de el balde y ahogarse. Retire los niños delos baldes aunque solamente tengan un poco de agua.
Drain oceans, lakes, rivers, streams... and puddles after a rain. Sounds like a jackbooted State compassion porkbarrel job for Homeland Severity. Can we allow 1/3 the US population to risk a soggy death?
Posted by: Uncle Al | October 18, 2006 03:51 PM
Ever more entertaining warning signs can be found here: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/10/warning_signs_for_tomorrow.html
Posted by: Nicola Jones | October 18, 2006 06:16 PM
I suppose that the real problem here, as in all economic problems, is the question of need and resource. At the absolute frontier to this is whether we actually need near as much technology as we create. At a more distant, less common sense-i-cal perspective, if we can find a way to engineer from nature a greater commodity of contrivances than is actually needed to remedy the more burdensome of our daily natural struggles are we sure that we know from the outset the actual checks and balances of nature? A very naive question, for those who do not take lightly the gift of life, or for those who acquire a notion that nature is inherently oriented against the individual as if he/she owes for his breath, is in the nature of the rationale to impose changes or rearrangements in the materials that naturally exist and in their either assumed, non apparent, or unknown role in the orders of the functioning of the world. Are we first transcending the natural order of things and second as if stepping into a new river for the first time in this transcending, rationalizing scientific test for safety, public concerns, scholarships of very high structure with a very high assumed confidence level and depth of understanding, when in fact we comprehend at the same time the great limitations of the mechanical approach and limitations of science to the actual complexities we observe in nearly all of seconds of our lives.
Nano technology is basically a science of surfaces-the nitty gritty microcosms of events, alignments, fitting together in function on tiny time scales. It is highly analogous to what we observe of the functioning of cells-enzymes, DNA genetic materials-efficient work output, increased order-decreased entropy of living things in an open balance with the external erosion and energy conservation forces, natural fluxes of the physical world. It is intuitively not a surprise that that the mechanical engineering of materials with regard to micro surface features open the doors to a vast compartment of the functioning, and evolution of the universe, as well as a means to employ it to aid in an uphill struggle against those factors that cause duress in daily living.
Enzymes and DNA function by a mechanism of molecules fitting together like machine parts. The most direct and dangerous potential of nano materials, by common sense would be those that interfere negatively in these mechanisms-those that do not get along well with the coherency of cells and cellular function. This to me is a very frightening thought as we do not know from the outset what exactly this might be. I do not suspect that we could only come across but by happenstance, and potential fatal error.
Second I do not think either that all of such materials are not slightly this way, the worst suspect, chemical agents created not as structural materials, mechano-electrical apparatuses, but as biological supports-aids.
That life itself is not a place of surfaces, that few, less even the very elderly, ever come to gain a meager understanding of ...when we find ourselves spending more time with nano materials than with our ordinary tools, friends, lovers, wives, picks shovels hammers-free time, it is not impossible that we are guided(misquided) by intuition, creative science thinking, "where can we go next", without a solid foundation. Mankind itself is the youngest of the species. What we can do, are able to accomplish, is not necessarily not a suicidal avoidance to our daily struggles and toils with the balances of nature. From a broad perspective could we not more easily accomplish the sinking of a ship with the misunderstanding that we are not also on board it; with the means to do so right at hand. That even one man thinks to employ science in warfare, or biological warfare, and others understand his thought, it is that any of us do not perceive it as a playing with the elements, that it pleases us not to make the distinction between a lack of empathy for living things with the alterations of materials: as objects do not have DNA or appear to have an aeteology related to natural evolution, life processes or speciation, I suspect all of the world is only the chemistry, physics and mathematics of the same type surfaces.
The suggestions and experiments on the use of biological cells in scientific apparatus is more directly repulsive, and of the same destructive impulse.
When we ask what we are able to do, what we can add together logically as sound, must also pass a test that, if a series of thoughts is involved, as a column of figures, that either we know both the first and last figure (The birth of space and doom for example) of we cannot assume to make changes based on any additions at all-especially since some changes can be known to cause direct harm.
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Posted by: Marvin E. Kirsh | October 23, 2006 08:48 AM
The Royal Society has just issued a report lamenting the UK government's lack of initiative in exploring nanoparticle toxicity. It is available at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?latest=1&id=5451. The report says:
"In commissioning our 2004 report on nanotechnologies the UK Government was recognised internationally as having taken the lead in encouraging the responsible development of nanotechnologies. However, its lack of progress on the actions identified in our report – particularly in addressing the uncertainties about the health and environmental impacts of nanomaterials – means that this early advantage has been lost. We urge the Government to dedicate more resources to this area in the next two years and compensate for the slow progress to date."
Posted by: Philip Ball | October 24, 2006 11:36 AM