WAKE up and smell the risks. That was the stark message delivered by US nanotechnology analyst Andrew Maynard, who this week urged industry and governments to boost spending on research into the health and environmental risks posed by nanotech.
He says industry is failing to realise where conventional chemistry ends and nanotech begins. Differences in surface area and the behaviour of individual molecules make nanoscale structures very differently to the micrometre-scale counterparts that chemists routinely test for toxicity. It is much easier for nanoparticles to get into organs such as the lungs, for example.
Of the $9 billion currently being…
