Safety of emerging universal technologies: drone and nano-bubble water

There are new big new universal technologies in research and coming to commercial market. This paper discusses two of them as examples: drone and nano-bubble water, specially their safety aspects. Safety of new technologies are becoming more publicized than before; however, its assessment are more difficult compared with that in the past. Drone: It is also called as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Uninhabited Air Vehicle), UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System), ROAV (Remotely Operated Aerial Vehicle), or aeromodel (up to 5 kg by air sport rules). Their operational rules are heavily discussed world-wide. Governmental controls are mainly focused on security (one found on the roof of Japanese Prime Minister office) and privacy, but also direct contact injuries had happened. JAXA data show that 5 kg test article presented with lethal level of Head Injury Criterion values on human body dummy. The most significant issue is that nobody has a systematic accident database. Nano-bubble water This is a Japanese invented very new technology. When bubbles with diameters less than 100 nanometers are generated within water, they do not dissipate for a long period, typically several months. There certainly are great possibilities and business-opportunities for this, but there are problems. Since no standardized measurement methods are agreed yet, many bottled products were tested to contain no nano size bubbles. There are clinical usage data already, but the core problem is that no precise data exist to show the level of bubble concentration used. We still see confusion in this regard. We are to see big application fields for these. We need to facilitate biomedical safety reviews for new technologies including the two above.