The unknown human health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology are a bigger worry for scientists than for the public, according to a new report published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The new report was based on a telephone survey and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers. It reveals that those with the most insight into a technology with enormous potential – and that is already emerging in hundreds of products – are unsure what health and environmental problems might be posed by the technology.
“Scientists aren’t saying there are problems,” says the study’s lead author Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and journalism. “They’re saying, ‘we don’t know. The research hasn’t been done.'”