I am still digging through some older news on nanotech. But it's not such a labor when you see an article on nanotech from the mainstream media. You get the fun of working through their labored definitions of nanotechnology, then comes the catalogue of applications and benefits, and then—this is typical when nanotechnology gets in the mainstream press lately—you get the scare.
The Boston Globe editorial page offered up just such a piece with a twist in that it was authored by the EPA’s first administrator and an adviser to the Project on Emerging Technologies. Not exactly your typical beat reporters pushed to get a story in on deadline.
The op-ed asks whether nanotechnology will force the EPA to “reinvent” itself to face the challenge of nanotechnology.
Not an altogether far out question. But perhaps the more fundamental question is will nanotechnology force us to change our approach to toxicology, instead of looking at the chemistry of substances will we have to examine the form and size in which these substances are present? It seems to change the mantra of toxicologists: "Hazard x Exposure=Risk". You're not quite sure what the hazard is any more.
This is not just a challenge for the EPA, but for science and the specific discipline of toxicology. It’s a big one: does a chemical or material that is benign and/or inert suddenly become toxic and/or reactive when brought down to the nanoscale?
