Nanomaterials Could Be Key to Environmental Cleanup

Pollution, oil spill, and air contamination are all real problems, as most of you living in large cities know. When it comes to their effect on nature, it can roughly be quantized, simply because there is no way of knowing how much damage an accident such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused. Its effects stretch to this day, and researchers have yet to find a way to clean the stretches of water that are still covered in oil. But a new report seems to suggest that nanoparticles may be an effective way of cleaning up after some of the worst environmental disasters of our days.

“Despite the potentially high performance and low cost of nanoremediation, more research is needed to understand and prevent any potential adverse environmental impacts, particularly studies on full-scale ecosystem-wide impacts. To date, little research has been done,” Dr. Todd Kuiken explains some of the challenges facing the wide-scale adaptation of nanoparticles as environmental remedies. He is a research associate for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), and also the co-author of the new report, published in the latest issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).

Over the past few years, researchers have taken a keen interest in understanding exactly the ways in which various types of nanostructures influence the development or the stability of ecosystems. For example, Canada has recently begun a three-year study to determine such effects on aquatic systems. This type of research needs to be extended, if nanoparticles are to be used to repair an existing problem, rather than cause a new one. On the other hand, the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) acknowledged in 2005 the potential applications of nanomaterials as remedies for the environment, but asked for more studies.

In 2004, a British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering report also recommended that the use of such materials be prohibited by law, until their effects could be more carefully assessed. The concern that these bodies show is not exaggerated, considering the fact that no one really knows how these particles would affect things such as the luminosity of water, the amount of oxygen, the gills of fish, and so on. Understanding these interactions is crucial to creating more sophisticated agents of fighting environmental disasters, experts say.