Few technologies have triggered as many comments, hopes, fears and radical statements as nanotechnology. The rapid development of nanotechnology and its growing importance for all aspects of society have been called a “nano-revolution” and heralded as being on a par with the industrial revolution. Nanotechnology promises to be a transformational technology, such as electricity and the steam engine, with profound implications for all sectors of the economy, including agriculture and food, energy production and efficiency, the automotive industry, cosmetics, medical devices and drugs, household appliances, computers, environmental remediation technologies and weapons.
Nanotechnology is unusual in several respects that simultaneously enhance its potential benefits and risks and complicate consideration of whether and, if so, how to regulate it. That consideration is further complicated by the potential flow of nanomaterial through international trade channels as both products and wastes, and by the potential long-range transport of some of these materials after their release into the environment.
This paper explores questions of how and whether manufactured nanomaterials should be addressed as an issue of global concern.