Q&A

As concerns about the health and environmental impacts of nano materials continue to swirl, this month's question addresses the risks associated with nano particles. Nanotech Briefs posed the following question to Dr. Clayton Teague, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, which supports the Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council.

What are some of the risks of working at the nano scale?

Dr. Teague: Currently, the risk of working with nanoscale materials is still an active area of investigation. I think the research to understand the risks of nanoscale materials is commensurate with the research that is underway to utilize the technology for economic benefit, and for overall improvement of the quality of life. I certainly believe that the benefits of the technology outweigh the potential risks that we now expect from working at the nanoscale.

When addressing this issue of environmental and health implications of nanotechnology, a very important perspective is to realize that materials with nanometer dimensions are not new to our environment. One need only look at the current nanoscale materials that have been around for a long time: paint pigments have had nanoscale materials incorporated in them for many years; carbon black, used to improve the wear-resistance in tires, has been around for a long time; and particles emitted from diesel engines and almost any kind of conventional combustion process contain nanoscale materials. I think it is important to realize that these kinds of particles – at least these dimensions of particles – have been in the environment for many years.

What is new is that we now have nano-engineered particles at this scale. We are now realizing that even some of these have been in the environment as outputs from combustion processes. These are the materials that we are trying to ensure that we do adequate research on so that we understand the unique properties resulting from their nanometer-scale size.

Do you have a question for our expert panel? If so, send your question for a future Q&A to the Editor, Cathleen Lambertson, at: cathleen@abpi.net.