Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies

Nanotechnology has great potential to benefit society, including renewable energy sources, clean water production, lighter, stronger materials, and more effective medical treatments (Schmidt 2007). Yet the success of nanotechnology will depend on understanding how products it leads to might cause harm to humans and the environment, and how that harm might be avoided. By working at the nanoscale, researchers are developing many new materials and products that behave in unconventional ways. Many of these use aerosols as precursors, or have the potential to release nanometer-scale aerosols into the environment. But these nanometer-scale particles are often designed to exhibit unique functionality, and there is uncertainty over whether they will also present unique health and safety risks. Research has already shown that nanoscale particles can be transported to areas not accessible to larger particles; that the biological activity of some particles increases with decreasing particle size; and that under some conditions, nanoparticles can interfere with biological processes at the nanoscale, such as protein folding (Oberdörster et al. 2007; Linse et al