Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
their environmental projects, although they may take advantage of local patent ilings.
This also may worsen the already present market failure in environmental economics. We
will discuss more on this in Section 18.4.
18.3.8 Technology Adoption
Another important issue is whether developing countries can adopt the new nanotechnol-
ogy methods in an eficient way and in widespread scale. As an example, how much would
be the incurred costs and needed time for developing required human capital capabilities?
While all these may be monetized and be considered in calculations, many developing
countries already realized that investment in human capital development is a long-term
necessity and cannot be put in a simple cost-beneit analysis isolated from other factors.
Nevertheless, for speciic technologies, it is inevitable and necessary to predict and take
into account the adoption stage in the economical calculations.
18.3.9 Timeline
When can we expect nanotechnology to show its impact? This is a key question regarding
the subject matter of this chapter, as in many cases environmental problems may reach
to an irreversible point where the damage caused to nature cannot be remediated by any
means. Many nanotechnology-based promising solutions have not reached the point
where they can be marketed on a wide scale. Even if they reach the market, it will take
time for them to enter the mass production stage and beneit from economies of scale. This
is a situation we may call “market timing failure,” which means the market mechanism
may provide us a solution when it is too late to be applied effectively.
18.3.10 Safety Concerns and Social Impact
As mentioned in the case study, some nanoparticles may have a side effect for the environ-
ment. The possibility of toxicity and uncontrollable dissemination through ecosystems are
two major emerging concerns. It is a valid concern that while we are focusing on beneits of
nanotechnology for the environment, new damages may be caused by disseminating toxic
isolated nanoparticles through nature, although many applications employ agglomerated
nanomaterials. These issues need to be addressed through comprehensive risk assessment as
well as close monitoring and control, enforced by international and public regulatory bodies.
Figure 18.9 shows a summary of the interaction between various technology-related fac-
tors that affect the environment and its socioeconomic attributes.
Technology life
cycle
Environmental
impact
Socioeconomic
impact
Product life cycle
FIGURE 18.9
Analytical framework for technology assessment.
