Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Biotech Science

The Issues of Nano-Safety 183

Posted by Hemos from the nano-nano-nano dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The Issues of Nano-Safety More

The Issues of Nano-Safety

Comments Filter:

  • Safety? Ha, who needs it! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:12AM (#7377475)
    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... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tekiegreg ( 674773 ) * <tekieg1-slashdot@yahoo.com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:15AM (#7377486) Homepage Journal
    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).

    • But will nanotech even be developed? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mongbot ( 671347 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:34AM (#7377594)
      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.

      • You know those things in your body called cells? The ones that run on sugars, create copies of themselves, and propel themselves with various techniques (flagella, cilia, etc.)?

        Those are pretty damn small, and they seem to work ok. Cells may or may not be nanotechnology depending on your definition but there are definately precedents in nature that show us that nanotechnology is feasible. Viruses might be a better (smaller) example.

      • Re:But will nanotech even be developed? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by denubis ( 105145 ) <brian@techSLACKW ... com minus distro> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:52AM (#7377715)
        Energy -- probably batteries. We're talking about very small scale here, so a nice room-temp supercon (which since we're talking about nanotech, isn't all that far-fetched) should provide for power requirements.
        Produced, by other nano-assemblers.

        Nanoassemblies should be the cheapest and most efficient production system around -- having many many many small machines "placing" molecules on an on-demand fasion (generally at the place of consumption.) What else do you need? There are no middle-men, there are no shipping costs, there are no store costs. Simply ship atoms and some quantity of data to you, and poof! you've got whatever.

        How are they going to move? Depends on the structure and the task, just like things of today. Flying is trivial for nanotech, since (assuming sufficently strong nanotech production abilities) it's really easy to make things lighter than air. Once you do that, simply add 3 turbines going through the center of the device for thrust, and poof!.

        The principle premise of true "nanotech" is that we can create machines on the molecular level. Given that the initial machines will probably be quite expensive, the initial machines can then make the next generation of machines that make machines (etc..) simply at the cost of a little energy and the moluecules necessary. Nothing else. 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.

        • Re:But will nanotech even be developed? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dr. GeneMachine ( 720233 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @12:17PM (#7377916)
          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.

      • 1) Most modern nanotech is fixed, a.k.a. it comes with batteries that cannot be replaced. Once the device runs out of power, it dies.

        2) The long-term theory is to create self-replicating, self-powering nanobots, which solves problem #1 and #2 at the same time. If you can produce a single one, then all you need is a tub of oil/whatever energy source and raw materials. Drop one in, come back ten hours later, and you're good to go. It's like drug research: making that first pill is a PITA, but after that
        • The long-term theory is to create self-replicating, self-powering nanobots

          Anything that is (accurately) self-replicating in this fashion will be indistinguishable from life. And if there is then even the slightest possibility of error in the replication, you will then have survival of the fittest and evolution.

          After that, watch out...

          -- Brian
        • he long-term theory is to create self-replicating, self-powering nanobots

          doesn't that seem like an awfully large problem, though? can we even make useful robots at normal scale that self-replicate? this seems like the barrier of the sort of faster-than-light travel. possible intheory, but so far remved from what we can do that it pushes the things beyond it into the realm of pure speculation. (which is, of course, a fine activity, but let's not confuse it with things connected to thereal world.)

          • >can we even make useful robots at normal scale that self-replicate?

            Well to product a robot at a normal scale, you'd have to produce parts with very high precision: motors, electronic,etc..
            So in fact, producing true self-replicating "normal bots" is almost as difficult as producing nanobots.

            We could probably produce, self-replicating bots which use lego-like elements, but what would be the point?

            And there is BIG difference between going higher than the speed of light and creating nanobots.
            The first on
        • Most modern nanotech is fixed, a.k.a. it comes with batteries that cannot be replaced. Once the device runs out of power, it dies.

          Actually, most modern nanotech doesn't need power. The largest nanotech markets are not for bots or other active devices, but for monodispersed crystals or ceramic dust. The cosmetics industry [smalltimes.com] buys large quantities of nanotech for use in makeup [apt-powders.com] and skin creams [loreal.com].

      • Chemistry We do huge amounts of nanotech every day its the core of the modern world. I think most people don't realize that nanotech is more and extension of extremely well known chemical physics than and reduction in traditional manufacturing processes. The biggest difference between nanotech and chemsitry thats done every day is nanotech is about spatial specific reactions in a homogenous enviroment. In other words given a bunch of reactive molecules we would like to react the ones located at some coord
      • If anyone could address those problems today, nanobots would be here and someone would be very, very rich.

        I'd say the best evidence for nanobot feasibility is the existence of microscopic animals. They prove it is indeed possible for an object of that size (and nanobots will most likely start out far larger) to be self-powering, self-propelled, and manufactured in large quantities.
      • This is the field I work in. Policy research in nano- and bio-tech. With biotech, the technology arrived before we had policy in place to deal with it. This was a Very Bad Thing as it led to rushed decisions, inadequate planning, and general nastiness. (Gene patents anyone?)

        With nanotech, the policy people are trying to stay ahead of the curve. This will mean that once the technology is ready, we will already have the details taken care of. There will be some changes, but the methods of shaping the argumen
      • You are not up-to-date on the literature. The questions you pose are addressed by Robert Freitas [rfreitas.com] in the ever expanding body of literature on Nanomedicine [foresight.org]. Specificially the recently published Nanomedicine V. IIA [amazon.com] deals with biosafety issues and the 4 year old Nanomedicine V. I [amazon.com] deals with things like power delivery and movement. If you want to educate yourself and contribute to real molecular nanotechnology, or as Drexler has recently suggested zettotech [nanodot.org] progress, (rather than simple nanomaterials which is
      • The article has nothing to do with gray goo and nanorobots. It's talking about the toxicity of buckyballs, nanotubes, and nanocrystalline ceramics.

        It quotes a scientist at DuPont saying that he's never seen anything as deadly as inhaled nanotubes and quotes some biotech VCs saying that there are real problems with buckyball-based pharmaceuticals because nobody knows how to assess the toxicity.

    • a bunch of Nano-bots will destroy us all from our inside

      Or from the outside. To go into 100% tin foil hat mode if indeed nanobots started replicating like nobody's business, surely it'd be more efficent for them to exit someone's lungs and let the wind carry them about?

    • I really don't think there is a way to stop progress, whether good or bad. There will _always_ be unscrupulous people that have no problem cutting corners or leaving gaping flaws unfixed or even outright design with malicious intent. Then there's the unintended consequences of playing with anything that is not fully understood, or mistakes where not all known variables were accounted.

      Our only hope is to mitigate this in part with testing, in part with education, etc. I imagine that there may have to be

  • some other links (Score:5, Informative)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:16AM (#7377492) Homepage
    Here are some other links about issues with nano-tech http://www.theecologist.org/searchResults.html?arc hiveOnly=1&searchString=nanotechnology&Search=Sear ch [theecologist.org] and here is a one that talk abouts issues with brain implants to boost intelligence [theecologist.org].

  • We can hope (Score:3, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:17AM (#7377503) Homepage Journal
    May a thousand nanobots attack the cells of anyone posting a "welcome our new nanobot overlord" post.
    • Dr. Eldarion [slashdot.org] should have seen this before posting [slashdot.org]. I saw the remains. Horrible simply horrible. So its official now. Nanotechnology definitely has safety issues.

    • Re:We can hope (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I, for one, welcome our new ultra tiny,super smart, dna altering, ready to take us back to the primortial ooze, uber cool nanomachine overlords
    • I, for one, welcome our new nanoverlords. ;-)

      On a side note, as far as practical applications go, I really dont see nanotech leaving controlled environments. This will limit its use to manufacturing (where it will see the most usage), military, and eventually medical (in some form).

      However, in no way will it ever reach the hype generated for it several years ago; its not much of a coincident that the crazy ideas envisioned for nanotech were thought up at the same time as the crazy ideas of the 'new economy

  • Seven of Nine (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) *
    You realize that by posting the New York Times article, this has become a story about Foresight, right?

    Seven of Nine can't be the only thing sexy about Nanotech. It sounds wonderful, if you think about the possibilities of controlling the world at a molecular level. But what about the costing of Nanotech? This means that instead of charging for a lump sum of material, the manufacturers can charge by the molecule!

    Talk about a get rich scheme!

    So guys, how can we prevent this from getting out of hand?

    Nanot
    • Nanotech, appears to be all it's chalked up to be... a great new path for a new industrial revolution. Think of the ways we can help the environment, our bodies, our society. We could build pure substances, and refine better goods.

      But don't forget the possible dangers involved. Not every technology that comes along is all positive and no negative.

      Like this poster [slashdot.org] said, it depends on how our society as a whole uses it.

      We as a modern human race seem to fail badly whenever we get swept up in the hot-new

    • That sounds fine and dandy, but I doubt without lots of major changes in goverance and distribution of power.

      Lets just say tommorrow some researcher at [insert some amazing research facility] puts out a press release stating that they've found the key. They can assembler/disassemble on the atomic and molecular scale, the whole thing scales and they can control the whole thing reliably.

      Firstly, do you think big business or government would ever let this technology get into the hands of Joe Average citize
      • Old SF series, Venus Equilateral by George Smith, dealt with something like this. Trying to develop a teleporter, they instead come up with a Trek-style replicator. The economy quickly collapses until they come up with a synthetic non-replicable material for currency, and the economy rebuilds based on services and certified "Uniques".
      • Lets not forget the fact that has human beings a technology like this would go exactly 20 minutes before someone used it to start creating some kind of insanely lethal weapon.

        Jim Bob here built himself a bunch of shotgun shells that pump the sonofabitch ye shoot fulla Ricin... what's Ricin again Jim Bob?

        Course, that's kinda a moot point... if you take a shotgun blast......

        Theory stands, with proper nanoassembly techniques there's not a whole lot of chemical difference between a vinal chair and a contai
        • Hence why you'd probably never see such a thing in your home. OR if you did, it would be cripled in some way so it would be incapable of creating a whole range of bad things.

          Here's something to think about... so you murder someone and throw all the evidence into one of these machines and tell "Disassemble and use components to make a clock radio"
          • The whole problem with that is 'throw all the evidence' ... collecting all the evidence is the challenge. The bloodcell in a carpet fiber or spattered on the wall is what gets you.
            • you've got a valid point. You'd have to find some way to contain the whole mess and then dispose of the whole thing. Or just tie the person up and throw them in. Yeah, they'rd be lots of screaming, but just throw in some Pantera and turn up the volume, nobody will notice.
      • Personally, I'd want one of these. This thing would be the ultimate recycler. Something like this would eclipse techniques like TDP for taking matter and coverting it back into its root atoms.

        The reason you are not likely to see one of these in your home has to do with the major limits on nanotechnology, time and energy. Energy is the ultimate currency of life. The reason why you don't see our existing nanobots working with even small chunks of metal, much less a Ferrari is because there is no "money" i

      • Firstly, do you think big business or government would ever let this technology get into the hands of Joe Average citizen?

        One would hope that the researcher would be ethical and anonymously release the information onto the Internet. There's no controlling information once it's that widespread.

        No more shipping, no more massive manufacturing.

        Oh no! How will John Q. Factory Worker feed his family, when all the factories shut down? Wait, everyone will have nanoassemblers, they'll just dump a shovel

      • The government would be so scared that radicals of some kind would get their hands on this technology and use it to manufacture guns / explosives / etc.

        You wouldn't need to manufacture anything! You could just program them to EAT THE WORLD UNLESS YOU PAY ME ONE-BILLION DOLLARS!!! <evil laugh>BWAH HAH HAW!!!</evil laugh>.

        Of course, not that I'd ever think of doing that or anything...

      • Some types of massive manufacturing and shipping will still be cheaper than nanoassembly, though certainly all refining will be done nanotechnologically due to the reduction in energy needed for the processes simply because they are more efficient. When we process ores now we do it with heat, and much of the energy is lost. Certainly we won't be doing any machining, casting or molding except for fun; just assembly.

        A Ferrari is not worth $155k because it is a performance automobile that can talk the talk a

    • Beyond that, Nanotech represents the last best hope for providing the kind of living conditions we're always talking about the the overwhelming majority of the world that we (frankly) don't give a shit about.

      I'm talking about the US's opinions here... the rest of the Western World is a great deal more enlightened.

      Nanotech devices represent a number of really key ideas. Starting with affordable water filtration devices and moving all the way up to super efficient energy, nanotech could bring the 3rd world
      • The rest of the western worlds seems more enlightened?

        How in the hell do you figure that? Enlightened france will sell weapons to almost anyone, and most of the other european countries are no different.

        Face it, most goverment in the world don't care about the 'little people'

    • Think of the ways we can help the environment, our bodies, our society

      How about remove our bodies? Just imagine at some stage in the future, we have the technology to offload what's stored in our brain to a machine directly. We could get rid of our feeble bodies. Instead of having to send heavy spacecraft out with life support, you ARE the spacecraft. You just choose a body for your needs - self repairing, thanks to nanotechnology. Perhaps our ultimate evolution is away from fragile flesh and bones, and

  • The luddites said the same thing... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...about asbestos. Full speed ahead!

  • Viruses and playing God (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:23AM (#7377534) Journal
    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.
    • Because human body is faaaar better designed than Windows, perhaps ?
      • Not necessarily. We get errors in DNA transcription, breaks in DNA, badly transcribed DNA, genes that go crazy and replicate until the host dies, viruses that attack at the genetic level, and a whole host of other cellular and genetic faults.

        It's just we have got better at patching these holes, and detecting bugs before they cause major harm... And the massive redundancy at the DNA level helps too...

        We're more like a failover cluster than a single machine...
    • I prefer to think of a virus as God's foray into programming. A virus is a quine. Think about it. The virus exists for no other purpose than to generate a copy of it's genetic code by executing it on a living cell. That's just my view on it anyway.

      I completely agree with your observation of our lack of understanding, though. But I guess that is why all this research is being done; to better understand nanotechnology.

    • Re:Viruses and playing God (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DG ( 989 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @12:58PM (#7378299) Homepage Journal
      You said a magic phrase there: "self-replicating"

      It is unlikely that any nanobots we'll be dealing with in the forseeable future will be self-replicating. In fact, I think the opposite problem - how to keep the damn things functional long enough to do their job - will be the more prevelent one.

      As such, the major issue facing nanobots is more likely to be analogous to the "space junk" problem (what do you do about large numbers of "dead" nanobots) than to be a "gray goo" or "runaway virus" problem.

      DG
    • Some would say that viruses are God's nanotech. Small, self-replicating, non-living, and very very potent.

      Viruses aren't self-replicating. The smallest things that can handle that task are bacteria.

      A virus needs to hijack the synthesis machinery of a cell in order to make more viruses. As noted by someone else on this thread, a virus is more like a quine [clueless.com]--code that generates another copy of itself as output, but you still need a compiler to execute it.

      In the sense of independent self-replicating mac

    • It would be a sad day if one of these (excuse the pun) bugs were released and some error was caught too late.

      It already happened on Mars. Didn't you see Cowboy Bebop [rottentomatoes.com]? The moral of the story is that we need to be able to manipulate the weather to deliver the antidote. Your fears about human hubris are clearly without merit.

  • . . .sounds like the perfect way to get rich - and quick!

  • Yet another article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Scalli0n ( 631648 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:25AM (#7377542) Homepage
    Here's a link to the page, no login required:

    LINK! [nytimes.com]

    Sig & Below [sp00fed.net]
    • In fact, I'll be a total KarmaWhore and just post the article right here too:

      As Uses Grow, Tiny Materials' Safety Is Hard to Pin Down
      By BARNABY J. FEDER

      When researchers fashion nanomaterials so small that their dimensions can be measured in molecules, the unusual and potentially valuable characteristics of those materials tend to show up immediately. But as businesses race to exploit those benefits, investors and policy makers are finding that pinpointing the potential environmental and health impacts of
  • I must say, the points brought up by this article are much more convincing then the "gray goo" argument about "what if the machines take over the world?"

    The NYT article actually presents some valid, observable concerns with existing technology and our bodies' abilities to deal with particles on that scale. A surprisingly interesting read.

  • One of my nanotech dreams. (Score:5, Funny)

    by dark-br ( 473115 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:26AM (#7377546) Homepage
    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

    • 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

      The problem with that one is that per your first nano-tech desire, you'd have to hit on hot, puke-green lesbians.
  • Well, I consider this a perfectly acceptable mortality rate extrapolated up to humans considering the vast array of benefits that will be derived from nanotubes, like ...ummm, well, I'm sure there are really fantastic benefits to be derived from nanotubes or researchers wouldn't be working on them so fervently. And that's good enough for me.

  • Stephenson's the Diamond age (Score:5, Insightful)

    by denubis ( 105145 ) <brian@techSLACKW ... com minus distro> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:28AM (#7377557)
    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.
    • Worries about grey-goo scenarios and DNA plagues shouldn't stop us from researching nanotech

      I agree, but I am still worried that the failure rate of a nanobot has to be nonzero, now no matter how small it may be, in order for nanotech to work, billions upon billions upon billions of nanobots are needed. I see probability 1 of failure.
      • First, depends on what you mean by failure.
        For the sake of this discussion of failure, you simply mean a given machine "doesn't work." And stops. For other instances of failure, other discussions should apply.

        But, given that definition of failure, the beauty of nanotech is that we can create thousands of machines for any given task, and even if 10% fail right off the bat, we've still got a ton of machines to do our work for us. Even if they do fail -- it's just a few dozen/hundred molecules of junk floatin
      • Indeed - but such failure need not be catastrophic. By the same logic, with the billions upon billions of bits stored on a hard drive, the probability of failure is 1 - but I can still successfully store data on it. With the number of atomic and subatomic particles that make me up, the probability of radioactive decay is almost certainly extremely high - but I'm still here, and I don't have cancer.

        Likewise, the failed nanobots may simply not work at all - just floating lifelessly until they're destroyed, b

    • Re:Stephenson's the Diamond age (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kirkjobsluder ( 520465 ) <kirk AT jobsluder DOT net> on Monday November 03, 2003 @01:34PM (#7378592) Homepage
      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.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.

      Nanobots in the form of bacteria, have been on the Earth for billions of years. The extensive history of activity at this scale deflates both the claims of grey goo pessimists and the claims of boundless possibility constrained only by society. Regardless of the talent of engineers, physics and chemestry pose some very hard constraints on what is possible.

  • Nanotechology disposal (Score:4, Interesting)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:31AM (#7377574)
    Don't ask, don't tell is the operating mode for much of the nanotechnology industry these days when it comes to where discarded products end up. Many companies assume that because they are working with compounds that are deemed safe in larger sizes or because the nanomaterials are embedded in larger products, the particles will not pose environmental threats.

    So, let me see if I get it: We haven't proven our nanotech products are safe, but nobody can afford to prove that they aren't. Since there is no proof that they aren't, we'll assume they're safe and dump them wherever it's cheapest. By the time anyone can prove that they aren't safe, we'll have made our money and then some.

    • You know what's worse? When the road-paving industry just dumps gravel out on the road, and billions of nano gravel particles go everywhere into the environment.

      They assume it's safe because gravel is safe in larger sizes! What idiots!
    • Did you read the article? They interviewed an investor who (wisely) said that he would not invest anything in nanotechnology until it was proven safe with other peoples' money. So in many ways the nanotech industry is stuck. It can't get money from investors until it's proven safe, and it can prove itself safe without money from investors.
    • Actually, you've got it backwards. It is impossible to prove something safe. In order to do so you have to prove that it has no dangerous properties whatsoever. The more useful test is to prove it dangerous. This is like our legal system, the decision is not innocent/not innocent(safe/not safe), it's guilty/not guilty (dangerous/not dangerous).

      There is no product or substance that is 'safe'. Water drowns, oxygen burns (or makes other things burn), helium... that should be safe, it just makes your voic

  • FUD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BurritoJ ( 75275 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:31AM (#7377575)
    The surest way to stifle innovation is to demand that the innovator prove that the invention will cause no harm. As we all know, proving a negative is a daunting task and 'harm' is a nebulous concept. All articles like this do is spread FUD. Fear of the unknown, Uncertainty about the future, and doubt in the benefits of progress.

    • You missed the 15% mortality rate thing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:58AM (#7377748)
      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?

      • No, I didn't miss it. What do you suppose the mortality rate is for injecting water into the lungs? And as far as asbestos is concerned... it causes lung cancer and that takes time. I would have been more concerned if this guy studied pesticides and decided that nanotubes were effective/dangerous compared to those. Any number of things can happen by injecting/inserting large amounts of foriegn substances into the body. Regardless of whether they are 'toxic'.

        I say again... FUD.

      • Right at the beginning of the article was the discussion of the 15% mortality rate of mice exposed to nanotubes

        You are not taking into account how they where exposed. The nanotubes where released directly into their lungs. I wonder what the mortality rate is for mice with common dirt released directly into their lungs? I am pretty sure that the mortality rate for releasing dihydro mono oxygen [think about it, that right H2O] directly into a mammals lungs is greater than 15%. If there was a 15% mortality

        • Don't dismiss peer-reviewed research so stupidly (Score:4, Informative)

          by ClarkEvans ( 102211 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @12:33PM (#7378070) Homepage
          I wonder what the mortality rate is for mice with common dirt released directly into their lungs?

          Did you even bother to look for the actual research. I did a very quick search [google.com] on google, and found this [neu.edu] report. I'd love an actual link to the study, but I don't have time to do more searching.

          This report talked about a study which compared particles of 20 nanometers (deadly) with ones of 130 nanometers (not deadly) in the same concentrations. Certainly these results are not perfect, a better study would make these nanoparticles into an areosol, as this would be the most likely form of real-life delivery.. that is, a light dust cloud breathed by a human after some object was moved containing nanotubes. In any case, I'm sure the same concentration of plain-old dirt would not even be noticed.

          If you want to argue the results... do you own study. Oh wait, that was the point of the NY Times article wasn't it... that not enough studies were being done. Amazing.

    • How is this article FUD? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ClarkEvans ( 102211 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @12:03PM (#7377789) Homepage
      But the $4 million it expects to award next year for risk studies is barely measurable against the $847 million in federal money that President Bush has proposed for nanotechnology research and development for the 2004 fiscal year.

      Couple this with the fact that companies will be more than willing to invest their own dollars in nanotechnology (but not studying risks), it is clear that we are not doing enough to study the environmental impacts of such stuff. This is brand new territory, with new rules and new concequences. It is stupid to think that the old rules to protect people and the environment will be adequate. Environmental messes are *horribly* expensive to clean up by comparison.

      To call this FUD is really irresponsible. You don't jump in head first to a pool of water unless you know how deep the pool is, no?
    • The surest way to stifle innovation is to demand that the innovator prove that the invention will cause no harm. As we all know, proving a negative is a daunting task and 'harm' is a nebulous concept. All articles like this do is spread FUD. Fear of the unknown, Uncertainty about the future, and doubt in the benefits of progress.

      But isn't FUD sometimes prudent when dealing with a substance that is proposed to be released into the environment in large quantities? After all, we had the "better living thro

  • To me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:33AM (#7377587)
    There is one, and only one, thing that makes me positively scared of Nanotechnology.

    And that is at the time that it becomes technologically and economically feasible, Microsoft will probably still be around.
  • It seems a little early to worry about nano-bot safety when regular occupational workplace safety, especially with respect to smoking cigarettes and alcohol consumption issues, are still widely protested. In other words, you'll die of lung cancer before a miniature robot accidentally recombines your DNA.
  • Where we need Good Nano in us to watch for bad Nano and destroy it. However in order to create the good that watches for the bad...

    Which would then bring up Nano-patch management. Think we need to get Macro-patch management down fist.
  • ... thought about it about 30-40 years ago.
    1. Build nanotech
    2. ...
    3. Profit!
    4. Death.

  • Can you say (Score:3, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @11:41AM (#7377643)
    NANOSHA ...?

  • Wesley Crusher (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I thought we already learned our lessons about nanotechnology when Wesley fell asleep. In the end all our problems will be solved by tachyons.

    DPH
  • There are two must-read items for people who want to understand nano-technology; Richard Feinmans 1959 paper "There's room at the bottom" and Eric K. Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (from the 1980s).

    While Feinman doesn't touch on the negatives of nano-technology, much of Drexler's ground breaking book is related to developing nano-machines WITHOUT risk to the human race.

  • Anyone who thinks there is no downside to this technology [upn.com] is kidding themselves.

  • Greenpeace UK commissioned a report into nanotechnology back in July 2003 which can be downloaded from here [greenpeace.org.uk].

    It was commissioned of Imperial College London with the brief that it should cover existing applications, current research and development - including the associated organisations with the incentives and risks they have for such initiatives.

  • Nano-Safety (Score:3, Funny)

    by Griim ( 8798 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @12:54PM (#7378259) Homepage
    1) Don't leave lid open on 'experimental' nanites while working late-night on a school project.

    2) Should this happen, be sure to let an adult know immediately instead of trying to quietly solve the problem yourself.

    3) Should they multiply and infect the computer core, do not try to fry them out of the core; results will be disastrous.
  • After all, I would just say:

    The Republicans are no Democrats.

    This of course applies only to those funded by Diebold & co.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne

Close