Nanotech might be bad for your health
THE GERMAN Federal Environment Agency seems to be a bit confused about whether or not nanotechnology is bad for your health.
Earlier this week an agency report led to fearful headlines in Germany's biggest newspapers, but yesterday the agency was distancing itself from the coverage.
According to Spiegel, the agency thinks that the health risks of nanotech are well known but it also sees opportunities in the technology.
The paper on nanotechnology was published on the agency's website. But now officials at the agency feel they have been misunderstood. They claim the posting is neither a warning nor a new study. Apparently it was just a background paper and not meant to alarm the public.
It admits that it has not done any research into the matter itself. Top environment agency boffin Wolfgang Dubbert told Spiegel that the paper was merely an updated version of a document first published in 2006.
There are already countless products on the market that feature nanotech components. The worry is that the agency does not know how many products there are on the market that contain nano-particles and they are not labelled.
If they do turn out to be killers then it might be hard for the population to even learn what products contain them and stop using them. µ
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Nano products do have some great use and potential. There are also potential risks involved, and right now we don't know exactly what the risks are or how big they are, which is a problem.
Asbestos was once considered to be very good for a broad variety of applications, now we shy away from it.
There are other examples as well: Radioactivity, Agent Orange, DDT and tobacco, just to mention a few.
Finally one should also mention the increasing levels of electro-smog (broadband EM radiation) that we are exposed to every day. No conclusive evidence regarding long term effects on the human body have come up, yet.
The mix of potentially hazardous factors will make it extremely difficult to tell which of the factors that do the harm, once we start suffer all the ill-effects.
How can a "tech" itself be bad? Some of its possible applications can be bad, but how can "nanotech" be bad?
remember the Borg in startrek!
they used nanotech, and it was very very bad!
(unless you get a kick off becoming a collective hive mind non-reproductable automiton (that means no sex life! - ever! btw)
(then again most of you lot have never had much more experience than watching pron anyway;)
but carbon nano tubes could cause damage to cellular walls(think lots of little syring needles loose in the blood) and if in sufficiently huge number could cause a lot of/fatal damage to a targeted bio-organism.
are asbestic for avoidance.
I'm thinking replicators,
I'm thinking replicators,
I'm thinking respirators
What KIND of nanotech, FFS...?!