EPA funds nanotech safety studies
DB: This is Earth and Sky. Nanotechnology – the science of the very small – has mushroomed into a global effort.
JB: Already, billions of dollars have been invested to discover the possible applications of nanoscale materials. But safety issues surrounding nanotechnology are only now beginning to be studied. Barbara Karn is a scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the fall of 2004, the EPA awarded 12 research grants to study the possible harmful effects of nanomaterials.
Barbara Karn: Frequently when new technologies are brought out, we’re very interested in how they will help make our products better, and we try not to look at the downside. With nanotechnology, I think we’re going about it in a little bit different way.
DB: Karn told us the goal is to get enough information to avoid unintended consequences or big surprises in the environment.
Barbara Karn: ... Here is a brand new way of making things, of a brand new way of doing business and enabling technology for industry – therefore let’s get it right this time. Let’s design for the environment. Let’s design for healthier products. Let’s design for a reasonable end of life for these products.
DB: For more about nanotech safety, come to earthsky.org. With thanks to the National Science Foundation, we’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
A good place to find more about the EPA’s activity to promote and monitor nanotechnology.
To get an overview of U.S. government funded research into nanotechnology, check out the National Nanotechnology Initiative website
More with Barbara Karn:
Frequently when new technologies are brought out, we’re very interested in how they will help make our products better, and we try not to look at the downside. With nanotechnology, I think we’re going about it a different way. It’s a way of changing the way we do business, the way we manufacture products, and the kinds of results we get, in the end in those products. But, at the same time, as we bring up this technology, we are concurrently looking at whether there are implications here. And so I think that we’re a little bit behind the applications with respect to looking at the implications, but it’s coming along.
... Here is a brand new way of making things, of doing business and enabling technology for industry – therefore lets get it right this time. Let’s design for the environment. Let’s design for healthier products. Let’s design for a reasonable end of life for these products, or recycle, or remanufacture, or reuse. So, I think that’s the opportunity that we have right now. And, as we get into more nanotechnology, it will likely help us use less stuff to make things, because we can make them smaller. We can add nanomaterials to polymers and make the resulting composite materials lighter and thinner, so there’s less material there. We can probably improve our processing using nano–kinds of manufacturing processes, and therefore use less energy in our industrial processes. So there are these benefits that will have all kinds of environmental and health and societal impacts.
Thanks to:
Barbara Karn, PhD
US EPA, ORD, NCER
Washington, D.C. 20460
