Nanotechnology is at the midpoint of its development, according to Ning Xi, a professor at Michigan State University, United States, and president of the Nanotechnology Council for IEEE. The emerging technology promises great advances for a host of industries, but concerns about health and safety issues threaten commercialization efforts. “The scientific community needs to focus on how to manufacture nanoparticles more effectively and efficiently,” Xi says. “We need to put an emphasis on this new phase of the project. Until you solve these problems, you’re going to have issues with mass adoption of nanotechnology.” David Carroll, director of The Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials and associate professor of physics at Wake Forest, also in the U.S., says concerns over the health and environmental effects of substances like nanosilver and carbon nanotubes in both the U.S. and Europe, have led to arguments about banning bath. “If they’re successful, it will have effects on manufacturing and the use of nanomaterials,” Carroll says. “I believe it’s an overreaction based on too little science. We just don’t know the full extent of what we’re looking at. There’s still a lot of work to be done.” Carroll and others are working on manufacturing methods that will limit the release of nanoparticles into the environment. He worries that further restrictions could have a negative effect on the U.S.’s ability to compete in nanotechnology globally. The biggest challenge to nanotechnology producers, says Reyad Sawafta, president and CEO of QuarTek Corporation, is the silence from regulators. “There’s been this backlash in recent years against nanotechnology, and it’s often by people who don’t understand it. That’s made the regulators hesitant to speak on the issue, and that makes it hard to commercialize the technology,” he said.
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