Soil pollutant
Organic
Both nearer term and more advances atomically precise manufacturing can introduce new kinds of potentially dangerous persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
Near term POPs
- in medicine there is a desire for drugs that won't be degraded to fast in the (human) body.
- artificial foldamers like peptoids tend to be less degradable than natural foldamers like peptides since the natural degradation tool-chain may not be capable to deal with the new stuff. (TODO: link video)
Far term POPs
A wide range of potentially useful small environmentally persistant molecules for which there are currently no synthesis pathways known that make high volume production economically feasible.
Elemental
Future products will be able to avoid the use many poisonous metals almost completely since advanced metamaterials made entirely from non-poisonous elements can emulate many material properties that today can only be archived by heavy usage of those potentially poisonous metals.
Metals that are today used for:
- oxidation protection
- battery usage
- as catalysts
- and mechanical strength improvement
All can be be avoided.
A view properties like very high density of mass remain only creatable by special elements. For high density of mass there can be used:
- abundant and thus cheap but poisonous lead
- less abundant and thus more expensive but less toxic bismuth
Usage of potentially poisonous elements can be made pretty safe by enclosing them in very durable (nonpoisonous) micro-capsules (e.g. made of diamond or moissanite). Such micro-capsules need to be tightly anchored to the parent macroscopic product with strategies to prevent fine grained breakoff. See "mobility prevention guideline" for details.
