The impact of nanotechnology

Just stop for a moment and consider what it means to be able to manipulate matter at the level of individual atoms.

Think how smooth you could make a surface, how sharp an edge or strong a fibre would be, how much more efficiently a chemical process might perform if each individual component was optimally aligned.

You're beginning to get an idea of the enormous potential nanotechnology offers. And it's a potential that industry has been quick to seize. From a standing start in 1990, the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Nanotechnology's database now lists more than 600 nanomaterial products already available in the global market place.

Things like the roof of the new St Pancras station, which is made of self-cleaning glass (it's coated with a nanomaterial that reacts with sunlight to breakdown dirt), or the sports gear that's impregnated with silver nanoparticles.

No, it's not a bling thing. Silver is a powerful anti-bacterial and these microscopic terminators poison the bugs that make your gym kit reek.

The problem comes when that silver impregnated material begins to degrade in your washing machine. Those silver nano particles are going to get washed out into the wider environment, and we don't really know what the consequences will be.

Although today's report - Novel Materials in the Environment: The case of nanotechnology - found no evidence of harm to human health or the environment, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution does raise serious concerns about our lack of understanding - the 'unknown unknowns' as the Commission's chairman Sir John Lawton put it.

It's the classic control dilemma. A new technology with obvious benefits emerges, but we really don't know anything about the long term risks associated with it. By the time hard evidence of a problem manifests itself that technology is already well embedded and doing something about it is much harder. Just think of asbestos, or organo-chlorine pesticides like DDT, lead in petrol or CFCs in fridges...the list goes on and on.

If we want to avoid a similar pattern with nanotechnology we need to start thinking about the long term impact of novel processes and applications now.