Nanotech Gone Awry? 173
westcoaster004 writes "Chemical and Engineering News is reporting what appears to be 'the first recall of a nanotechnology-based product' due to health risks associated with it. The recall of 'Magic Nano' spray, which is for use on glass and ceramic surfaces to make them repel dirt and water, comes after at least 77 people in Germany contacted regional poison control centers after experiencing illness after using the product. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment has also issued a warning." Relatedly dolphin558 writes "There is an interesting story in the Washington Post on the unknown dangers facing employees of nanotechnology firms. The jury is still out on whether traditional HAZMAT safeguards are suitable when handling nanomaterials, many of which can be harmful. Research into potential workplace hazards is beginning to ramp up as the industry and government become more aware of this issue."
Nanotech bounding forth with no safety concerns,, (Score:2, Informative)
Yet we are all more concerned with getting a 100GB Flash based ipod, cars and clothes that don't ever need to be washed, etc etc.....
Safey first? Bah, $$$ first...
Re:Nanotech bounding forth with no safety concerns (Score:2, Informative)
A critique of this fearmongering...
Full critique available here [snipurl.com]Re:Nanotech? (Score:5, Informative)
Definitely nanotech (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nanotech? (Score:2, Informative)
Asbestos (wonderful material) is considered verboten because, from Wikipedia: Most respirable asbestos fibers are invisible to the unaided human eye because their size [diameter] is about 3.0-20.0 m in length and can be as thin as 0.01 m.
0.01 m = 10 nanometers
Asbestos is the example Doctors use when talking about the threat from nanoparticles. The other biggies that get talked about are teflon and metal/welding fumes.
There's a big business in 99.97% HEPA filtration, because it's the standard for asbestos cleanup. You can read more about that specific filter quality [abatement.com] to understand why they use 99.97% as the benchmark.
In the past, particle size was talked about in microns or sub-micron. We've been dealing with nanoparticles for a long time, it's just now the word "nano" is getting attached to those products because nano is currently cool.
Preview Preview preevue! (Score:3, Informative)
0.01 meters = 1 centimeter, not 10 namometers.
I'm guessing you were referring to micrometers, but if you had previewed you might have realized your mistake (7-10 orders of magnitude?) in trying to use formatting commands.
Your point and others about this spray not being nanotech is absolutley correct.
As for those who dismiss the idea that the problem may be related to the aerosol even though no problems were reported with the pump version, your blind faith in Ludd has been recopgnized. I hereby grant you the rank of Private in the Barbie Brigade ("Math is hard" platoon). If you will state a conclusion in direct opposition to facts plain enough for even you to state them clearly, then you will continue to allow your betters to think for you.("betters" in the purely feudal sense by the way).
Now, if you had instead said something like:
Although all of the reports have been from users of the aerosol product and none yet from the pump product, there should be further study to make sure that the problem is caused by the aerosol. If the actual problem does turn out to be inhaled nano particles, then the aerosol delivery system may be accelerating the onset of symptoms by increasing the concentration of inhalable nanoparticles when they are applied. Once applied, nanoparticles may be released back into the air over time. One possible delayed release method would be shockwaves propogated through the material the product is sprayed on. Such as a door closing. A good experiment would be to lock the marketers of the "nano spray" in a room liberally treated with their product and then subject the walls of that room to multiple shockwave effects (beating on the walls, slamming the doors repeatedly, and maybe playing loud music with a very heavy bass component).
One might also repeat the experiment with the manufacturers of the spray. To determine the "placebo" effect, run two more blind tests with nano-protestors - one group exposed to the nano spray and one group exposed to pine-scented air freshener.
Re:Nanotech? (Score:2, Informative)
You've watched too much StarGate.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
This is still all just hype (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nanotech? (Score:3, Informative)
As for the dangers of the current genetically modified food; we really can't tell. It isn't as if all types of genetically altered food would present the same dangers, some may be perfectly safe, other not so safe. The big problem now is the increasing use of pesticides when growing crops and the increase in price for farmers. Not the big industrial farms, they make up for the price in economies of scale, but the small farms and local producers. It is often cheaper, and more profitable, for small farmers to grow organically.
So on the whole, I have found that I would prefer to not have a relativey new technology pervading our food supply as it does now.
Re:Nanotech? (Score:1, Informative)
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The story of wheat [economist.com]
Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The story of man’s staple food
[Image] [economist.com] (Still Pictures)
IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.
Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.
It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.
The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.
People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.
Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?
Re:Nanotech? (Score:5, Informative)
GM food is engineered to require less pesticides.
That is at best misleading and at worst outright wrong. The RoundUp Ready line of crops are specifically engineered to resist pesticides so that higher levels can be used. Some plants do require less pesticides, but these are the ones which produce their own pesticide.
As for your contention that GM food reduces the amount of land needed, I'd like some hard statistics on that. If it's true that would be a good thing, but given how wrong you were on the previous point I'll assume you're wrong for lack of evidence.