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Nanotech risks need large-scale assessment
LAS VEGAS-The rise of nanotechnology offers a host of potential benefits for industries ranging from health care to construction to insurance. Yet for the insurance industry, the amazing opportunities offered by nanotechnology bring a variety of potential new exposures and concerns.
"It's hard to think of an industry that isn't going to be disrupted by nanotechnology," Jack Uldrich, president of Minneapolis-based consultancy The NanoVeritas Group, said in November at the Insurance Services Office Inc.'s annual ISOTech Conference in Las Vegas.
Nanotechnology-the design and building of materials and machines on a molecular scale-will lead to computers a million times more powerful than those currently available and devices the size of a sugar cube capable of storing the Library of Congress, Mr. Uldrich said. It will also result in the development of hundreds of cancer-curing drugs and materials 100 times stronger than steel, he said.
Aware of the opportunities the technology holds, business is racing toward embracing nanotechnology's potential.
"GE is pumping millions of dollars into this because they say, 'At our heart we are a materials science company, and we've got to play in nanotechnology,'" Mr. Uldrich said. Meanwhile, companies like Ford Motor Co. and the Boeing Co. have partnered to develop shape-shifting, self-healing nanomaterials, essentially by endeavoring to reverse-engineer the human healing process, he said.
There are numerous practical applications on the nanomaterials front that are likely to...