Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The medical applications of nanotechnology are under development or near-
ing commercialization.
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The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has
predicted that the annual global market for nano-related products and services
will reach $1 T that will make it one of the fastest-growing industries.
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In the US, passage of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Devel-
opment Act infused $3.7 B in US federal funding from 2005 through 2008 to
support nanotechnology R&D that resulted in the creation of the National Nan-
otechnology Coordination Office. This office is responsible for the funding of
various federal nanotechnology initiatives and the creation of R&D centers.
A market research report
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wrote that sales of products incorporating emerg-
ing nanotechnology will increase from <0.1% of global manufacturing output
today to 15% in 2014, totaling $2.6 T. This figure almost equals the size of the
information technology and telecom industries combined and will be 10 times
larger than biotechnology revenues. Additionally, the NMs like carbon nano-
tubes and quantum dots will total $13 B in 2014. Thus, nanotechnology's eco-
nomic effect will come from the application of NMs and not the raw NMs. The
same report projects that 16% of health care and life sciences will incorporate
nanotechnologies by 2014. With the diversity of NMs applications in medicine
and the life sciences, potential investment activity will upsurge causing the need
for patents to be in place. Patents in the applications of NMs in medicine are
vital to realize its promising potential and to move beyond academic research.
8.7 CONCLUSION
To date, various governments have become more aware of the possible benefits
as well as the dangers of exposure to NMs in various consumer products. This
awareness has led to various guidelines worldwide.
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The need to properly
establish the various properties of the NMs have also been recognized as essen-
tial for the evaluation of the possible effects on health and environmental safety.
The limitations in the risk assessment of NMs are still preventing proper
evaluations, and probably, also the possible adoption of strict regulations. The
lack of high quality exposure and dose related data for humans and the environ-
ment is one of the major drawbacks in adopting regulations for NMs use and
applications. There is also the difficulty in determining the presence of NMs
and reproducibly quantifying them on a routine basis in various substrates that
results from the lack of reliable and standardized measurement techniques.
These must first be overcome before regulations for screening/monitoring of
nanoscale particles in sensitive work areas can be implemented. The biggest
challenges lie on the measurement of NMs in the air, water, and land. This
consequently holds as well for food and food products that come from water
and land.
Currently, the knowledge on the presence of NMs relies on information provided
by manufacturers. The detection of NMs in consumer products suffers from the dif-
ficulty in discriminating between the background signals and added NMs. This is
