Page 18 - Environmental Nanotechnology Applications and Impacts of Nanomaterials

4 Nanotechnology as a Tool for Sustainability

is considerable effort underway to explore uses of nanomaterials in appli-
cations such as membrane separations, catalysis, adsorption, and analy-
sis with the goal of better protecting environmental quality.
However, along with these innovations and the growth of a support-
ing nanomaterials industry, there is also the need to consider impacts
of nanomaterials on environment and human health. Past technologi-
cal accomplishments such as the development of nuclear power, genet-
ically modified organisms, information technologies and synthetic
organic chemistry have generated public cynicism as some of the
consequences of these technologies, often environmental, become appar-
ent. Even potable water disinfection, the single most important tech-
nological advance with regard to prolonging human life expectancy, has
been found to produce carcinogenic by-products. Some groups have
called on industry and governments to employ the precautionary
principle while conducting more research in toxicology and transport
behaviors [3, 4]. The precautionary principle, often associated with the
Western European approach to regulation, might be summarized as “no
data, no market.” In contrast, the risk-based approach that has come to
typify regulatory development in the United States, might be reduced
to the philosophy of “no data, no regulation.” Both approaches require
reliable data. Although studies are beginning to appear in the literature
addressing the toxicity of various nanomaterials [5–10] and their poten-
tial for exposure [11, 12], at this stage definitive statements regarding
the impacts of nanomaterials on human health and the environment
remain sketchy.
In this book, we consider the topic of nanomaterials through the lens
of environmental engineering. A key premise of our approach is that the
nanomaterials industry is an emerging case study on the design of an
industry as an environmentally beneficial system throughout the life
cycle of materials production, use, disposal, and reuse. One element of
this socio-industrial design process is an expansion of the training and
practice of environmental engineering to include concepts of energy and
materials production and use into environmental engineering education
and research.

Nanoconvergence and Environmental
Engineering
Environmental engineering evolved from an interdisciplinary approach
to solving water quality problems that traces its origins to the latter part
of the 19 th century. The concept of bringing microbiologists, stream
ecologists, traditional civil engineers, and aquatic chemists together to
resolve problems with dissolved oxygen in surface water originating from
waste discharges was revolutionary in its time. This interdisciplinary