Overview of Nanoscience in the Environment - Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Nanotechnology - page 2

particles and their properties which are related to environmental processes, fol-
lowed by a discussion of interaction forces between colloidal particles and their
fate and behaviour in aquatic and terrestrial systems. Chapter 5 reviews the avail-
able knowledge about natural and adventitious nanoparticles in the atmosphere
with a focus on their sources, transformations and concentrations. The analysis and
characterization of manufactured nanoparticles in the environment are discussed
in Chapter 6. It gives a general overview of the key properties that describe nano-
materials and the methods for sampling, extraction and sample preparation. This is
followed by an extensive discussion of analytical tools for the characterization of
nanoparticles, such as fractionation, fi ltration, microscopy and spectroscopic
methods.
Chapters 7 and 8 discuss the ecotoxicology and toxicology of manufactured
nanoparticles, while Chapter 9 reviews the occupational health and exposure of
nanoparticles. In Chapter 10 regulation, policy and risk management are discussed.
This chapter starts by presenting the risk assessment framework for chemicals and
then discusses the risk assessment of nanoparticles. It also discusses the critical
issues for risk assessment of nanomaterials and the approach that should be
adopted for this purpose.

1.2 History

The basic concept of nanotechnology was outlined by Nobel Prize winning physicist
Richard Feynman in 1959 when he said 'the principles of physics as far as I can see,
do not speak against the possibility of manoeuvring things atom by atom. It is not
an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but
in practice it has not been done because we are too big' (Feynman, 1960, 1992).
The term ' nanotechnology ' was fi rst used by the Tokyo Science University professor
Norio Taniguchi in 1974 to describe the precision of manufacture of materials at
the nanometre scale. This term ' nanotechnology ' became popular and in use in the
public domain in 1980 when Eric Drexler published his book 'Engines of Creation' .
The advent of the scanning tunnelling microscope in 1981 and atomic force micro-
scope in 1986 enabled atom clusters to be seen for the fi rst time (Binnig et al. , 1982,
1986 ).
However, the history of nanoparticles goes back much further. ' Soluble ' (or col-
loidal) gold appeared around the fi fth to fourth century BC in Egypt and China
and has been used for both aesthetic and curative purposes. In 1618, the philoso-
pher and medical doctor Francisci Antonnii published a topic which is considered
as the fi rst topic about colloidal (nanoparticulate) gold. In 1676, the German
chemist Johann Kunckels published a topic in which he spoke about ' drinkable gold
that contains metallic gold in neutral, slightly pink solution that exert curative
properties for several diseases' and concluded that 'gold must be present in such a
degree of communition that it is not visible to the human eye'. In 1818, Jeremias
Benjamin Richters noticed the formation of pink or purple solutions of fi ne gold
and yellow solutions when the particles have aggregated (Daniel and Astruc, 2004)
and, in 1857, Faraday reported the formation of red solutions of gold by the