Small, but far from insignificant
There’s a nuclear scientist, a genetic engineer and a nanotechnologist all being held at the barrel of a gun by a desperate man at the beginning of a very bad joke. The captor says he’ll shoot all of them unless they can convince him they are doing something good for the world. The nuclear scientist tries first, explaining that nuclear power is “clean, cheap, and will solve climate change.” Unconvinced, his captor shoots him dead and turns next to the nanotechnologist to plead his case.
Before he can say a word however, the genetic engineer intervenes “No!” pleads the genetic engineer “please shoot me first – I’d rather die than hear yet another lecture on why nanotechnology is going to save the world!” Before this decade is up we will have listened to a lot of explanations about why nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the level of atoms and molecules, could be the greatest, greenest revolution the world has ever seen.
Philip Bond, US Undersecretary of State for Commerce, claims Nanotech has the potential to “achieve the nearly miraculous” – let the blind see, the lame walk, solve our energy woes and clean up the environment. Remember “Genetic engineering is going to feed the world,” and “Better living through chemistry”? Every decade or so it seems that society has to ask searching questions of a new technology sold as the next technofix to our planetary woes.
Of these, nanotechnology is probably the most powerful and fundamental technological wave yet seen, but at the same time has gotten into our environment, onto our bodies and into our food without raising a whisper. However there is a massive controversy brewing and it seems that Oxford, home to many of nanotech’s star companies and leading proponents, will be slap-bang in the middle of it.
Here’s the new nano-wave in a snapshot: the world currently spends close to 9 billion dollars a year on nanotech research – half of that by governments. The rest is mostly by Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, Kraft Foods, and Exxon, some using Oxford as their lab of choice. It is already possible to buy nanotech products on the high street: L’Oreal cosmetics and Gap trousers are among the better known brands using nano-inside.
Some fruit juices already have nanoflavourings and Stagecoach buses (that’s the Oxford Tube to you and me) have been trialling a nano-particle fuel additive in Oxford buses for a year now. Hundreds of universities now offer nanotech courses, with Oxford University’s Materials department very much a world leader. A nano-metre is one billionth of a metre – that’s 80,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
For the likes of Oxonica, working at the nano-scale allows them to change what were thought to be unbendable rules of material engineering. While it was once assumed that a chemical element or compound would have a fixed set of properties, nano-particles rip up that rule book and make matter malleable in powerful industrial hands. This is exactly where the problems come in – it should be ringing alarm bells in our age of corporate globalisation and Bhopal-like disasters.
Being smaller, nano-particles move in different ways, and can cross the lung, the skin, and even the blood-brain barrier. The few studies that have been carried out have raised red warning flags – fish suffering significant damage in the brain and rats suffering acute lung damage.
A recent review of nano-particle toxicity undertaken by the Royal Society concluded that too little is known about nano-particles to be able to assess their safety and that they should be labelled, treated as hazardous materials, and prohibited for environmental applications. In their recent response the UK government broadly agreed but offered no specific regulation. Another concern raised about nano-technology is its impact on the poor.
One of its leading companies, Nano-Tex, is already reaping profits from nano-engineered synthetic fibres that cheaply mimic cotton. Their product potentially disadvantages cotton farmers, who are among the poorest people in the world. New carbon nano-tubes that conduct electricity better than copper are being produced by Mitsubishi, potentially at the expense of poor copper mining communities in Zambia.
While promises are already being made that nanotech could clean up water and produce renewable energy for poorer regions, such claims appear to have little basis in the real economics of livelihoods in the Southern hemisphere. Nano-surveillance is another concern. Coming around the corner are a host of nano-enabled sensor devices that are able to invisibly measure and communicate environmental data.
Originally designed for military use on the battlefield these tiny sensors (known as ‘smart dust’) can feed back data on military troop movements. Almost fifty percent of US nano funding is appropriated by the military and homeland security, raising concerns that nano will be not only the next essential ingredient in tomorrows smart weapons, but also the means to stifle dissent and exercise corporate and state control.
Oxford University too has its share of nano-research on behalf of the military. With no regulations and massive questions hanging over this revolution, civil society groups have been calling for caution and a moratorium on new nano-materials as well as binding negotiations on governing new technologies. Leading these calls is the Oxford-based ETC Group, along with groups such as Greenpeace and the more radical watchdog Corporate Watch.
A controversial public debate is brewing over whether the multibillion dollar nanotech revolution should be allowed to proceed, under what terms and on whose say so.
28th Apr 2005