ABSTRACT
The advent of nanotechnology as the “next Industrial Revolution” might cause anyone with some knowledge of the environmental and health effects of previous industrial revolutions to ask some justi˜ably tough, skeptical questions. The promises of previous technological revolutions-a car in every garage, the peaceful atom, and better living through chemistry-have ended up generating signi˜cant environmental and health-related side effects and risks. The outcomes, in retrospect, are such that present generations would have bene˜ted if previous generations had been more perspicacious about the regulation, design, and release of new technologies. Although precaution may be the lesson from the past, and the bene˜ts of new technologies are often overhyped, new technologies generally involve both advantages and disadvantages, and consequently there may be little support for a political decision not to pursue at least some design variants of a proposed new technology. In this sense, nanotechnology is no different from previous generations of technologies that posed issues of both substantial societal bene˜t and environmental and health hazards and risks.
