Facing the Dangers of Nanotech 172
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."
I smell nanoparticles... (Score:5, Funny)
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Nanoparticles should disperse quite well, and if they get past conventional filters they could obsolete billions of dollars in NBC defenses.
Is a nanoparticle dirty bomb practical?
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And so long as we don't care about destroying the local exosystem (unless we can make something that will only assault human brains).
Then again, I thought that biological/chemical warfare was one of those big nonos that we all sorta agreed on....
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If it was, there'd be no reason for your government to invest money into defending itself from the stuff, no?
I'd say most people/organisations/government/etc are only against ABC warfare untill the opponent uses it against you, and there are reasonable chances that a similar attack by you will harm your opponent enough to at least temporarily stop the attacks against you. I.e people are again
Re:I smell nanoparticles... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Like that's ever stopped anyone. Doesn't the U.S. still deploy land mines?
Re:I smell nanoparticles... (Score:5, Interesting)
Great idea to treat brain cancer too.
The idea is to modify certain magnetic nanoparticles so that they can attach to the cancer cells. Then by applying a vibrating magnetic field, we make make the nanoparticles vibrate and generate heat. As a result, the cancer cells get killed and the amount of affected good cells is very small.
But, I think I need a tin foil hat.
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But, but, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
Didn't I just read something about ancient swords [slashdot.org] using nanotubes?
Re:But, but, but... (Score:5, Funny)
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IT'd be nice to see some actual nanotech ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Nice?" (Score:4, Insightful)
In sum (Score:5, Funny)
As Mork would say, "Nano, Nano!"
Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:5, Funny)
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Re:Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:5, Funny)
Correct.
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WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Yeap, usually in around 78 years is the average amount of time it'll take nano particles of water vapor in the atmosphere to kill you. I invite you to experiment breathing other types of atmospheres to see how long you life though.
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I don't think it's that which kills you...
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I don't think it's that which kills you...
Shh, I want to see if they'll experiment with breathing non-oxygen atmospheres in an attempt to experimentally extend their life. If anyone attempts this experiment, I'm fairly certain they'll be in the running for a Darwin Award. Come on any one want to try to win an award?
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What exactly does water vapor have to do with oxygen? That's just incoherent.
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I think his point is that we are dealing with familiar materials in unfamiliar configurations. When dealing with anything unknown a certain amount of uncertainty, doubt, and yes, even fear or trepidation is called for.
Sure you can probably get away with treating that which is unknown in a cavalier fashion, making the assumption that it is perfectly safe until otherwise demonstrated to be unsafe. But of course when approaching that which is unknown in this fashion t
Poor logic.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The founding fathers were activists. As was Any of many people that caused changes.
Just thought you might like to know that.
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The founding fathers were activists. As was Any of many people that caused changes.
Funny, I don't recall any of them referring to themselves as activists, or mentioning that word in writing. Thus no revolver-reaching-for.
Re:Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I have to mention that the size might not be the problem, but rather the properties of these nanoparticles.
The most important thing to remember when talking about nanoparticles, is that a lot of these materials have a unique thing in common, quoth wikipedia, "vastly increased ratio of surface area to volume". Remember for example lunar dust [wikipedia.org] and the problems associated with it? Imagine that effect on a much worse level.
Re:Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:5, Insightful)
If I swallow a quarter,
See http://www.kemcointernational.com/NANOPHASEAPPLIC
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Re:Nanomaterial == molecules (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA simply advocates caution and diligent research into negative consequences of nanotech while the technology is being developed. TFA never urges abandoning anything. I agree with the author that we should keep close tabs on this stuff and watch it for long term effects.
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Yeah, some molecules can pass the blood-brain barrier.
The whole point of the statement you quoted was that it is not necessary to pass the blood-brain barrier if you can enter the brain through the nose. But that might have been to subtle...
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I dunno, how would you consider your body ?-)
Marketing is everything (Score:5, Funny)
They're perfectly safe, and prevent acne.
More idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
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???
That's NOT what he is advocating! (Score:2, Offtopic)
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 May
Blood brain barrier, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
missed the memo (Score:1)
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Yum! (Score:3, Funny)
It will happen, you know it.
Nature is full of nanoparticles (Score:1, Insightful)
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 a
You're ignoring the "high surface area" part. (Score:2)
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)
More Fun... (Score:3, Funny)
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You know what this means... (Score:4, Insightful)
what would be better than a bomb that goes off and you breathe in particles that can easily penetrate your organs
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How to hurt people, in quantity, cost-effectively (Score:3, Interesting)
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,
Disappointed (Score:1)
Down with the Precautionary Principle! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Progress requires risk. Deal.
On some level, I agree. The question of course is how much risk, and how do you manage that risk?
I'd hope you wouldn't argue that we totally eliminate the FDA and just let people deal with the risks of the effects of untested drugs. That would be, IMO, insane.
The arguments in the article seem entirely reasonable to me. Small particles behave differently in biological organisms. Before we go full-tilt into deploying new nano-scale materials into food products and anything els
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Progress has to be an improvement over what came before. Mesothelioma, the result of one of our previous experiments with using materials, was not progress.
New stuff needs to be tested. That's simply good engineering.
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Two edged sword (Score:3, Insightful)
Scale matters (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Scale matters, and so does hype (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scale matters, and so does hype (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Scale matters, and so does hype (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Scale matters (Score:4, Informative)
Now it seems likely that metal oxides, being noncharged, are less likely to be involved in chemical reactions (its usually very hard to get oxides to interact at all). So I would expect zinc oxide (in contrast to iron particles) to be relatively benign. The question becomes whether the body has effective mechanisms for binding to and either degrading or removing nanoparticles. If it does not then exposure is potentially cumulative and may be harmful. The normal reaction of the body to something it cannot degrade or remove is to form a granuloma (a collection of cells designed to isolate the problem) surrounding it. So depending on the precise size of the particles they might either penetrate cell membranes and accumulate within cells (which is probably not good) or potentially accumulate until the point where granulomas may form. On the skin surface that isn't bad since you are sheding the skin anyway. Within the lungs however it can be a much larger problem (as silicosis and black lung disease show).
Nanoparticles are not new -- coal miners, blacksmiths and cooks have been dealing with them for centuries. What may be new is greater exposure to a larger variety of nanoparticles by a greater fraction of the population. That is worth being careful about but does not translate into throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Uh... that's f*cked up. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Basic physics... (Score:3, Insightful)
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"?
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Plants and some other critters with chlorophyll use it to create carbohydrates out of thin air (think CO2) and water.
Exactly. And have said plants managed to convert the earth into "grey goo" yet? They've had quite a while to get really good at being efficient at using energy and matter to make themselves.
there's a big furnace burning below ground, enough to supply the activation energy for many chemical reactions
Ok, and once all the chemical reactions have taken place that were activated by the higher te
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blockquote>Exactly. And have said plants managed to convert the earth into "grey goo" yet? They've had quite a while to get really good at being efficient at using energy and matter to make themselves.
Pretty much, yes. You won't find many places on the planet, where plant-life can grow, but there is no plant-life there.
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This doesn't mean that it won't cause problems. It may end up killing all life on the planet, or something like that, before it stops.
I find this a rather meaningless statement. You can make a lot of potentially true, but useless statements about something that isn't defined and doesn't actually exist. Since we know nothing about this thing that doesn't exist, we can make almost an infinite amount of meaningless statements about what it MIGHT do. The only limits we can place upon it are the physical boun
Reply: Basic physics... (Score:2)
IOW, curiosity killed the cat, while a lack or repression of human curiosity will destroy everything that humans are
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Evolution's fantastic and all, but it's hardly an exhaustive search of all the possibilities at an scale. People have been able to invent lots of interesting and efficient things that haven't evolved, from wheeled carts to nuclear weapons. Self-replicating nanomachines will face limitations, but it's no reason to get com
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The problem is you'll probably find out that in order to keep up with rapidly mutating and adapting cancer cells, the nanites will *need* to mutate.
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Indeed, were the cancer cells mutating as fast as you suggest, we wouldn't need to treat cancer; the cancer cells would eventually mutate so much so as to be unable to duplicate their chromosomes anymore, and all cancers would be self-containing. That isn't what happens, obviously.
Nanites don't need to
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Released, this nanite could theoretically convert the earth (see "grey goo") into a giant ball of itself.
Much the same log
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However, in the spirit of brainstorming, it seems that if you create enough redundant and functionally diverse systems in the nanomachine to check itself out, and then destroy itself if it didn't check out correctly - mutations would become statistically impo
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First of all, self replication should only be attempted after many years of successful nanotechnology, if at all. It's
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Read what I wrote. Making individual nanobots capable of replicating themselves is a mistake. Allowing nanobot model A to build nanobot model B, and model B to build
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Huh? ... another BigChicken (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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One Man's Assertions... (Score:2, Informative)
Like asbestos? (Score:2)
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
how is this different from anything else? (Score:2)
New materials, or old materials put to new uses should absolutely be tested for safety, whether that new material
Nanotechnology != Nanoparticles (Score:2)
nano (Score:2, Informative)
The answer is rational precaution... (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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.
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Re:Michael Crichton's Book (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't take even Asimov novells as anything to be read if I would want to do science in a particular field. Fiction!=Science, no matter how good fiction it is.
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Re:Michael Crichton's Book (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it was replete with pseudoscience that would make a great movie, but terrible research. Nanobots that are as intelligent, sophisticated, and above all mobile as the ones in that story aren't just impossible under current technology limits, they're impossible at all.
Sixty years ago, tech enthusiasts were absolutely certain we'd have a colony base on the Moon by now. Sixty years from now, nanotech will be just as stunted compared to where we imagine we'll be.
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Using Prey as a reason to be concerned about nanotech research makes about as much sense as using Jurassic Park as a reason to be concerned about the Human Genome Project.
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