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UK : Nanotechnology: Whistle blown!
30th July, 2004
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This relatively new technology announced recently as ‘the technology of the future’ has whistle-blower scientist calling for its ban.
Reason according to them is that they pose health and environmental risks great enough to justify their ban form daily use. In a report commissioned by the British Government stated that their use in certain cosmetics now found on the U.S. market was a cause for concern.
What is this nanotechnology for starters? Basically, it is a technology by which scientists can shrink the size of atoms or particles in such a manner that physical size as well as characteristics of any component object can be cut down in size. It is a technology that can manufacture super strong products or reduce on atom-scale electronic components and super-strong materials.
Carbon atoms, for example, when woven into hollow microscopic threads, can conduct electricity and are stronger than steel. Other nanomaterials look promising as drug delivery vehicles, environmental cleanup tools and in computer hard drives. Nanoparticles boost the ultraviolet-light-blocking power of sunscreens and cosmetics.
Talking of these products the report offers reassurance while acknowledging the fact that the technology is really in a nascent stage.
But sometimes due to their extreme chemical reactivity and as they are of just the right size to integrate themselves into living cells – nanoparticles, make some scientists and activists nervous.
Meanwhile, this Britain's Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering report also warns that the manufactured specks at the heart of nanotechnology -- tens of thousands of which can fit on the tip of a needle -- behave in random ways and in certain cases appear astonishingly toxic.
The report states that unless proven safe for use on skin, the increasingly popular nanoparticle-laden cosmetics be kept off the market shelves calling upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take undertake a thorough investigation on the technology.
It has also been critical of the experiments being performed in the United States in which nanoparticles have been spread on the ground -- experiments, the report says, that could pose serious risks to organisms in soil and groundwater.
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