Do novel materials present
novel risks? Novelty is a big part of advanced materials.
Not novelty in terms of amusement of course - although
the inventors of Silly Putty may beg to differ - but novelty as in something
that's new
or unusual. If you can design and engineer a material that behaves
differently to other materials you open the door to improving existing products
and inventing exciting new ones. If you get it right,
you could make a financial killing. But novel materials can
also help find solutions to some really stubborn challenges like
ensuring everyone has enough food, and water, and energy, for instance.
This is fantastic... as long as your fancy new material
doesn't create more problems than it solves. And here's the rub -
how do we know that these novel materials
don't come pre-packaged with novel risks?
On the surface, the question makes a lot of sense.
If a material is designed to behave in unusual ways,
who's to say that that unusual behavior won't
lead to unusual biological impacts that in turn lead to unusual harm,
and unusual diseases? However, this is
also a somewhat misleading question, and here's why:
From a human health perspective we're interested in
risk - what can cause harm, how does it do it,
how much harm could potentially be caused, and how can we reduce
or avoid this? As far as our bodies are concerned,
they couldn't care less about whether the risk is novel
or not - they're just interested in whether something is going to hurt,
and how to avoid that hurt! For instance,
if you hit your thumb with the latest nanocomposite-metamaterial-super-hydro-
whatever
hammer, the instrument of destruction may be highly novel,
but the pain will be the same as if you'd used your grandmother's antique
nail-whacker. The novelty is in the hammer,
but not in the harm it causes.
The danger here is that focusing on novelty
rather than risk diminishes the importance of the
actual harm to the material could cause.
It implies that the only interesting risks
are the new and unusual ones. And it ignores the reality
that many common risks associated with materials - novel or otherwise -
remain highly important and poorly understood.
When it comes to novel materials and
advanced materials more generally, a much better question is:
"Can this material potentially cause
harm?" Followed quickly by "Under what circumstances,
what type of harm, how much, and how can it be avoided?"
These questions focus on impact rather than novelty,
and recognize that many novel materials may in fact present rather mundane
risks - that nevertheless still need to be dealt with.
Of course there's still
the chance that a novel material will do something entirely unexpected if it gets
into your body.
As last week's Risk Bites highlighted, this
is where we need scientists asking the difficult questions -
just in case something new does come up. But until it does,
fixating on novel risks runs the "risk"
of overlooking the more boring risks that are likely to be a problem unless
dealt with.
Next week, the last in this series looks at
turning risk on its head, and asking whether understanding potential health
impacts
can actually help us design better advanced materials.
Until then, stay safe.