Nanobattery technology touted as eliminating fire risks

Anything to do with nanotechnology must seriously go through rigorous testing and that has not been done. It is very scary stuff and could lead to ALL kinds of problems from health to economy and no one is really seeming to care.

Read up on it and it'll scare the hell out of you lol

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Aug 23 2006, 09:11 PM) [snapback]308674[/snapback]</div>

Really? anything with nanotech? And nobody cares? Sounds similar to comments made about all genetically modified organisms and nuclear power - very, very dangerous, mustn't do it.

When average Joe's talk about these new technologies, the benefits are often downplayed and the hazards are over-emphasized. Also, the hazards of the status quo are all but ignored. For example. 1) Chemical pesticides are used in abundance when we could be increasing a plant's own pest resistance instead. 2) The pollution from burning/mining fossil fuels kills tens of thousand of people every year while only a minute fraction have been harmed from working in/living near a nuclear power plant.

As with any technology, precautions need to be taken for sure, but why take such an extreme position before the technology has even been developed?

A fire resistant, more powerful battery technology could do an amazing amount of good in this world - it is a goal definitely worth pursuing.

If you have specific concerns about nanotechnology - let's hear em.

F

 

My extremne stance on the subject probably stems from my disgust with human nature to do before we think. We are always doing something then finding out we did it wrong then trying to fix the problems and it ends up costing us more money than the original research would have and something was lost in the process.

Nanotechnology has wonderful beinfits but those can come at a huge cost if not implimented and regulated carefully.

The basics are:

common elements exhibit recognized properties in a macro form. When in a nano form they can change rather drastically. Take graphite for instance. In macro form it is soft and malable. In nano form it is stronger than steel and 6 times lighter. Aluminum can spontaneously combust at the nano scale and be used in rocket fuel. Nanoscale copper becomes highly elastic at room temperature, stretching to 50 times its original length without breaking. Its is these quantum property changes that make nanotechnology so crazy and potentially useful because it opens up a whole new realm of resources.

The problem stems form the fact that nano particles are so small (it takes 10 hydrogen atoms side-by-side to equal 1 nanometer or 1 billionth of a meter) that they can only be observed through an atomic microscope. The are permeable through the skin and would have great mobility throughout the environment. Since the quantum properties of these elements change we are not fully aware of the toxicity of these common elements once in nano form BUT we do know that nano particles have a larger surface area that can make them more chemically reactive so a substance that is normally inert at the micro or macro scale could be hazardous at the nanoscale. IE, a company tells some regulatory regime that they are simply working with (insert common element here) but in reality they are using a nano form of that elemnt which is highly toxic and they could be releasing this element into the environment (cities included) and no one would be the wiser unless you were to take air/water/soil samples and examine them with said atomic microscope. The point is that if a substance has already been approved for, say a food additive, at a larger scale (such as titanium dioxide), nano particles of the same substance do not trigger a new regulatory aciton, even though by definition they can have dramtically different properties and toxicological effects.

Health risks could stem form the super tiny particles entering the bloodstream through inhalation, skin permeation, disgestion etc and slip past traditional "guardians" of our immune system like the blood-brain barrier. For more informaiton on that search buckyballs, nanotubes, and quantum dots. There has been small scale research on the possible health risks and they dont look good.

#1 rapid onset of brain damage in fish subjected to buckyballs
#2 2005 researchers at the U.S. national Aeronautics and Space Administration reported thast commercially available nanotubes were injected into the lungs of rats, they caused significant lung damage. The researches indicated the nanotube dosage was roughly equivalent to worker exposure levels over a 17-day period.
#3 A study at the National Institute of Occupational Saftey and Health reported in 2005 substantial DNA damage in the heart and aortic artery of mice that were exposed to carbon nanotubes.
#4 In 2005 University of Rochester researchers in New York found that rabbits inhaling buckyballs deomonstrated an increaed suceptability to blood clotting.
#5 A 2005 study shows that buckyballs clump together in water to form soluable nanoparticles and that they can harm soil bacteria, this raises concerns about how these carbon molecules will interact with natural ecosystems.

I cannot vouce for those studies above but those were the easy ones to find despite the lack of research funding.

So I'm not saying its all bad but without severe discretion we could be in for a very big problem. Not to mention the economic impacts for southern countries who cannot afford this technology and whose economies are build on natural resources that we may no longer need. Think Chile and thier copper who's economy could plummet because nona carbon makes a great conductor of electricity and would replace copper wiring.