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– I’ve written about this problem before. Nanotechnology holds huge promise but, I believe, it also holds huge risks.

– Anyone who’s read Engines of Creation by Drexler understands how incredibly powerful these new compounds will become as we master their creation. But anyone who’s read Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and the story of Ice-9 will also realize how very badly things could go if we’re not careful.

– Scientists are and have been raising the alarm on this issue but thus far, not much has been done. In systems which are primarily profit driven, one can predict that not much will be done until a major problem manifests. Let’s hope it’s not a self-replicating, self-perpetuating something that we’ll be very unhappy we let out of the box.

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Science Daily — As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently stated, nanotechnology has evolved from a futuristic idea to watch to a current issue to address. And for this new technology’s enormous potential to improve everyone’s life to be realized, nanotechnology must be subject to an adequate oversight system—a system designed to identify and minimize any adverse effects of nano materials and products on health or the environment.

Regulatory oversight of nanotechnology is urgently needed and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should act now, reports a new study released today. In EPA and Nanotechnology: Oversight for the 21st Century, former EPA assistant administrator for policy, planning and evaluation, J. Clarence (Terry) Davies, provides a roadmap for a new EPA to better handle the challenges of nanotechnology.

New nanomaterials and nanotechnology products are entering the market each week, and an adequate oversight system is necessary to identify and minimize any adverse effects of nano materials and products on health or the environment. Davies’ report sets out an agenda for creating an effective oversight system as nanotechnology advances–the technology that some have hailed as “the next industrial revolution.”

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Tags: nanotechnology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 08:09 and is filed under CrashBlogging, Nanotechnology, Science, The Perfect Storm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.