Exploring Ethical Impacts of Nanomaterials for Wastewater Remediation

Nanotechnology and nanomaterialsNanomaterials offer potential contributions to the Sustainable Development Goal 6: clean water for all. However, the use of nanomaterials in innovative water treatment solutions can raise ethical concerns as well as benefits. These potential ethical impacts should be assessed before implementing the technology in real life, to ensure that remediationRemediation measures can be taken in parallel. Such ethical impact assessment can be supported by guidelines and online tools based on CEN Workshop Agreement part 2 CWA 17,145-2:2017 (E)), applied to nanomaterialsNanomaterials and nanoproducts in the RiskGONE project ( https://riskgone.eu/ ). This paper reports on an evaluation of identified ethical impacts of the imagined use of nanomaterialsNanomaterials in wastewater remediationRemediation in a developing country and formulate recommendations for remedial actions. The case study is based on desk research and the main purpose was to test the online ethical impact assessment tools, not to assess the ethical impacts of a real-life project.