Page 77 - Elana Freeland - Under an Ionized Sky

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like an RFID system.

After September 11, 2001, the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) activated Oak
Ridge National Laboratory’s SensorNet program to begin integrating nano- and microsensors
into real-time detection and surveillance.

It is [in transportation and commerce] that the full scope of surveillance integration can be seen as a management
strategy that merges legislation, federal inspection systems, international standards, security threat assessments, and
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the latest in nanotechnology.

At the close of 2003, Public Law 108-153, the “21st Century Nanotechnology Research and
Development Act,” quietly made its way through Congress. “The President shall implement a
National Nanotechnology Program. . .The activities of the Program shall include (1) developing
a fundamental understanding of matter that enables control and manipulation at the nanoscale . .
.” Congress was assured that nanotechnology was the “science of the future.”
In 2005, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars announced the
moneymaking “Internet of Things” (IoT) angle in its Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies:

To document the marketing and distribution of nano-enabled products into the commercial marketplace, the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies created the Nanotechnology
Consumer Products Inventory (CPI) in 2005. . .The revised inventory was released in October 2013. It currently lists
1,814 consumer products from 622 companies in 32 countries. The Health and Fitness category contains the most
products (762, or 42% of the total). Silver is the most frequently used nanomaterial (435 products, or 24%); however,
49% of the products (889) included in the CPI do not provide the composition of the nanomaterial used in them.
About 29% of the CPI (528 products) contain nanomaterials suspended in a variety of liquid media and dermal
contact is the most likely exposure scenario from their use. The majority (1,288 products, or 71%) of the products do
not present enough supporting information to corroborate the claim that nanomaterials are used . . . 15

Nano research boomed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the Department
of Energy research facility run by University of California Berkeley. Once the National
Nanotechnology Program was in place, all caution was consigned to the outer darkness of
“national security.” In 2007, when the City of Berkeley requested that the LBNL (and UC
Berkeley) comply with a city ordinance requiring corporations working with engineered
nanoparticles to submit a toxicology report and “how the facility will safely handle, monitor,
contain, dispose, track inventory, prevent releases and mitigate such materials,” neither
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institution complied. A month later, UC Regents approved major expansion of LBNL, virtually
ignoring city and community outcries about toxic compounds in the soil and groundwater,
including polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, hazardous metals, tritium, etc. 17
For the most part, critical warnings and second thoughts about nanotechnology withered on
the vine of scientific journals, though the Journal of Nanoparticle Research did manage to
publish “Nanotechnology and the need for risk governance” about the “governance gap” between
nano- and microtechnologies. (1 nanometer nm = 0.001 micron μm, a quantum world of
difference.) From the Abstract:

. . .The novel attributes of nanotechnology demand different routes for risk-benefit assessment and risk management,
and at present, nanotechnology innovation proceeds ahead of the policy and regulatory environment. In the shorter
term, the governance gap is significant for those passive nanostructures that are currently in production and have high
exposure rates; and is especially significant for the several ‘active’ nanoscale structures and nanosystems that we can
expect to be on the market in the near future. Active nanoscale structures and nanosystems have the potential to affect
not only human health and the environment but also aspects of social lifestyle, human identity and cultural values . .