Life cycle assessment is an essential tool for ensuring the safe, responsible and sustainable commercialization of a new technology, according to this article. Nanotechnology life cycle studies are susceptible to huge uncertainties due to data quality issues and the rapidly evolving nature of the production processes. And, no one – no research institute, no government agency, no industry association – seems to even know how much nanomaterials are manufactured today. According to Mark Wiesner, James L. Meriam Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Duke University and Director, Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT), “Obtaining estimates on the potential nanomaterial production capacity is like pulling teeth given the uncertainties, proprietary issues, and rapidly changing landscape. For that reason it is difficult to pin the potential production values down to even within an order of magnitude. But upper bounds on production amounts, as well as quantification of the uncertainty of production amounts are critical quantities that we need to produce estimates of the potential for exposure to nanomaterials.” Wiesner’s team attempted to estimate upper and lower bound annual United States production quantities for five classes of engineered nanomaterials. They found they had to take an almost criminalistic approach to gather data, and the team still ended up with estimates that have two, and in some cases, three orders of magnitude separating them. The bottom-line, according to the article, is that as long as governments don’t require manufacturers to fully disclose nanomaterial production data, life cycle assessments will not reflect the real situation. “Without these data on the magnitude of potential releases, efforts at predicting environmentally relevant concentrations prior to their eventual detection in the natural world will be hampered considerably,” said Wiesner. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=20942.php