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Another major 'environmental' impact that may be very nefarious is the health effect of such nano-materials.

We don't want to re-create all the mess that we have today form asbestos -- which was also a wonder-material at the time.

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The problem with asbestos wasn’t really the toxicity per se, it’s that the companies using it hid the toxicity to avoid having to do all the expensive safety steps that would let them use asbestos without killing people. We can avoid this with carbon nanotubes and similar if we’re honest about the risks and careful with how we handle them.

This will probably happen again given all the money that's on the line.

The fact that we’re talking about it here implies that we’re in a better place than we were a century ago.

A century ago yes, fifty years ago I'm not so sure, thirty years ago almost certainly not.

There's at least a little bit of study regarding graphene toxicity. Hopefully nothing as massive as asbestos will ensue.

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