Scientists Worry About Nanotechnology's Environmental Impact

Problem Can Be Solved by Soybeans and Water

Gold salt nanoparticles, used in technologies ranging from medical applications to smart telecommunications devices, pose the great threat of negative environmental impact, but now researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) have developed an environmentally safe way to produce gold salt nanoparticles.

Gold salt nanoparticles currently play a very important role in advanced technologies. They are used in diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Additionally, they are used in smart electronics applications in computers as well as in telecommunication devices.

Scientists are greatly concerned over the negative global environmental impact of nanotechnology. In fact, testimony (most notably of Andrew Maynard, the chief scientist of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) was recently given before the House Science Committee making the case for government regulation of the burgeoning nanotechnology industry that is already flooding the marketplace with nanotechnology products, the safety of which--for consumer and production worker--has not been tested.

Scientists' reasons for this well-founded concern is that several environmentally damaging synthetic, or artificial, man-made chemicals must be produced in order to make gold nanoparticles. Furthermore, these artificial chemicals cannot be produced unless another set of synthetic man-made chemicals is first produced as ingredients for the synthetic chemicals from which gold nanoparticles are produced: there is a two-tier synthetic chemical production process necessary to the production of gold nanoparticles, which would represent the third tier of environmentally hazardous production.