Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain

Gustavo Marques da Costa

Nanotechnology is moving out of its comfort zone of scientific discourse. As new products go to market and national and international organizations roll out public-engagement programs on nanotechnology to discuss environmental and health issues, various sectors of the public are beginning to discuss what the controversy is all about. Nongovernmental organizations have long since reacted; however, now the social sciences have begun to study the cultural phenomenon of nanotechnology, thus extending discourses and opening out nanotechnology to whole new social dimensions. These dimensions and their newly constructed imaginings around nanotechnology intersect with the ecology, health, governance, economy, and illusory futures. There is always a need for more than just an ELSI (ethical, legal, and social implications) sideshow within nanotechnology. The collective public imaginings of nanotechnology include tangles of science and science fiction, local enterprises, and global transformation, all looking forward toward a sustainable future, while looking back on the past debates on science and nature. This book highlights the environmental health and economical concerns of nanotechnology and discusses its future research directions. It provides academia and industry a high-tech start-up that will revolutionize modern practices. With little and outdated literature available on the topic, this timely book will be helpful for the readers as it thoroughly covers the environmental, ethical, and economical issues of nanotechnology.

Environmental, Ethical, and Economical Issues of Nanotechnology

At the end of 2019, the world came across a virus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes a disease classified as COVID-19. The virus is highly transmissible and causes an acute respiratory syndrome that ranges from mild symptoms in about 80% cases to very severe symptoms with respiratory failure in 5% to 10% of cases. The epicenter of the outbreak of this pandemic was Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be a pandemic and classified it as a high global risk. Human health risk assessment for COVID-19 depends on the characteristics of the virus and includes the process of gathering and analyzing environmental and health information using specific techniques to support decision making, systematically taking actions, and articulating the collected information within and between sectors for promoting health and improving the social and living conditions of populations. To assess COVID-19 risk factors, it is important to consider and document all relevant information available at the time of assessment. In this way, decision making will get a direction and the assessment process will get recorded, which includes evaluation of the risk factors, control measures, methods used for evaluation, why they were considered important, and their order of priority. This book addresses in detail the challenges posed by the virus and presents up-to-date knowledge on safety risk assessment and economics, as well as ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of COVID-19.

Gustavo Marques da Costa

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