US presidential candidate (among other things) Ralph Naders latest book The Good Fight pops up in this mornings New York Times. Whether Nader is merely ill informed on this issue, or whether he is accurately catching the zeitgeist of public attitudes towards nanotechnology remains to be seen, but the paragraph below clearly shows that Nader views nanotech in the same light as nuclear power, industrial scale fishing or petrochemical companies.
Fossil fuel and nuclear industries, petrochemical and mining companies, forest-cutting and pesticide firms, dragnet ocean fishing corporations, biotechnology (and soon nanotechnology companies whose speed of deployment is far ahead of their science) fail to behave as good stewards of the Earth.
This pig-headed and dogmatic attitude to technology is both dangerous and wrong. Study after study has indicated areas of concern in the application of nanotechnology as well as tremendous environmental benefits in the areas of energy and water. The European NanoBusiness Association, University of Cambridge and Greenpeace can often be found discussing these issues, and urging responsible deployment, especially of nanoparticles. The recent Royal Society study went as far as to call for a moratorium on the uncontrolled release of nanoparticles into the environment. The upcoming Nanowater conference will be showcasing a range of nanotechnologies with applications ranging from detection of water borne pathogens to the removal of pollutants.
There is an ever growing list of environmental applications of nanotechnology, many of them offering both near-term and cost-effective solutions to some of the worlds most pressing problems. While some applications of nanotechnology give grave cause for concern, lumping all nanotechnologies together as negative is a blinkered approach that risks throwing the baby out with the bath water.