Mega-Concerns over Nanotechnology

With the ever-expanding range of applications for nanotechnology, issues of its safety, and the lack of knowledge we have on it, are coming to the fore, as an article in this week’s issue of The Economist describes.  Despite the use of nanotechnology in nearly 600 consumer products to date and the filing of over 1500 nanotechnology patents last year, it remains very difficult to predict a substance’s behavior (and the safety implications thereof) when it is made extremely small.  This uncertainty is illustrated by the varied results of research thus far, and explains to some extent why smaller companies utilizing nanotechnology choose not to devote chunks of their limited budgets to safety research.  Ultimately, the call for more research on nanotechnology safety seems to be on target: greater understanding of the toxicity of and exposure to nanoparticles is critical for effective government regulation and will help to fill the knowledge gap on the risks of nanotechnology, whether they are significant or not.