You can’t pick up a newspaper today without seeing an article on some advance in nanotechnology (and its potential to make you rich if you invest). But how safe is this form of technology?
Nanotechnology is the branch of technology that deals with the “nanosize,” on the scale of a millionth of a millimetre, about 1/1000 the size of a red blood cell. It often involves manipulating materials on the molecular scale, finely arranging atoms into precise configurations. Nanotechnology has actually been around for hundreds of years-it was just never named as such. Since the tenth century, stained-glass painters have finely divided gold and silver to create a breathtaking array of colours.
Nanotechnology exploded in 1985 with the landmark discovery of buckminsterfullerenes, also known as buckyballs, so named because they look like the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller. These molecules are made of 60 carbon atoms forming a sphere in the same arrangement as a soccer ball.
Remarkably, even though they are made of the same old carbon atoms we are used to, in diamonds and in chunks of black left after a fire, buckyballs have properties never seen before in any other form of carbon. They can conduct electricity extremely well. They are tiny hollow balls, and scientists have found many ways to fill them with various other molecules, making “cage-like” molecules. And buckyballs can be made larger by adding more carbon atoms to manufacture an elongated structure with closed ends-something called a nanotube, first recognized in 1991. Nanotubes can be made hundreds of times stronger than steel.
Many other nanomaterials have new properties never seen in “conventional” materials. Scientists and industrialists therefore promise to use to bring us an astonishing array of new and improved products-drinking water filters, fuel cells, cosmetics and sunscreens, stain-free fabrics, burn and wound dressing, protective coating on eyeglasses, paints that protect from corrosion or graffiti, dental-bonding agents, catalytic converters, longer-lasting tennis balls and tiny computers.
The pharmaceutical industry in particular is interested in nanotechnology. Nanoparticles can be used to identify and label diseased cells. Doctors hope to send injections of nanoparticles to cancer cells, and “piggybacking” a drug inside, leaving the healthy cells untouched. Moreover, some nanomaterials can enter cells very easily-nanoproducts are already used as markers that allow biologists to track molecules moving around a living cell.
But what makes nanomaterials so attractive to the biotech industry may actually make them dangerous from an environmental and health standpoint. As they can easily get inside living cells, and as they have so many new properties, could these nanoparticles do anything unpredictable and possibly damaging?
Are carbon nanotubes the next tech panacea or the new asbestos?
“Ordinary materials, such as carbon, when reduced to the nanoscale, often exhibit novel and unpredictable traits such as extraordinary strength, chemical reactivity, electrical conductivity, or other characteristics that the same material does not possess at [a larger] scale,” reports The Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), a Canadian-based health and environmental watchdog. “In other words, size matters.”
Not surprisingly, the tech industry has listened to scientists for the last 30 years with dollar signs in its eyes. And in a sluggish governmental fashion, the regulating bodies to rein in the industry are still not in place.
ETC Group reports that: “Nanoparticles are already available to consumers in sunscreens (including some intended for children, from infancy onwards), and cosmetics, among other products. However, regulators do not test nano-sized materials for health, safety and environmental impacts if their [larger scale] counterparts have already been approved.”
In other words, we are already so familiar with materials made solely of carbon, like diamonds and graphite, for example, that newly discovered forms of carbon need no further safety approval-even though these new forms have new and extraordinary properties.
In a May 2004 communiqué, ETC Group states: “At present there are no regulations explicitly targeting the products of nanotechnology anywhere in the world, even though hundreds of products have reached market and hundreds more are in the pipeline.”
In 2003, this group went so far as to insist on a moratorium on all synthetic nanomaterials until satisfactory toxicological studies were completed. These studies would likely be directed at freely moving nanoparticles rather than those that are fixed or etched to a larger object, such as on a computer chip. Free nanoparticles can be inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin, and can cause damage to cells.
Dr. James Baker, from the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan, says, “Clearly, nanomaterials provide a challenge to regulatory agencies. Current outlines for the review of nanomaterials are based on regulations developed for standard materials. The FDA is taking a number of steps to revise their process of evaluating nanomaterials and is having a national conference in Washington in March of 2005 to address these issues. From these meetings, a broad consensus of additional analytical testing for nanomaterials should emerge.”
Vicki Colvin, director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) at Rice University, is concerned that lack of research on the health and environmental consequences will lead to public fear in the same way that GMOs were condemned as Frankenfoods before opponents had scientific data to support their claims. She says that the lack of information, “whether positive or negative, was a controlling factor in [that] industry’s fall from favour… and ultimately cost billions in lost future revenues.”
In her address on nanotechnology to the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2003, Colvin explained: “You can wear a silver bracelet with no ill effects, but if you eat too much nanoscale silver, as some people have in the belief it has various health benefits, you will turn yourself blue. Finely divided solids have access to areas of the body and interact with biological systems in completely unexpected ways, which is exactly why they are so powerful in medical applications. The converse of this is that unintended exposures…to nanoscale solids could have more dire consequences than turning skin blue. Or they could turn out to be benign. We just don’t know. If we fail to answer these questions early, public acceptance of nanotechnologies could be in jeopardy, and the entire industry derailed.”
At a conservative estimate, that industry has been forecast to be worth a trillion dollars by 2015. Scientists have a vested interest in keeping nanotechnology alive. Institutes like CBEN have set up programs to study the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials. They will have their work cut out for them with new materials being characterized weekly, each one with new properties and a new potential to wreak havoc on biological systems.
Dr. Eva Oberdorster, an American toxicologist at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, performed a study showing that after two days of swimming in water containing buckyballs, largemouth bass fish suffered damage to the fat membranes in their brains and their livers. In other studies, nanotubes have been shown to damage lung tissue in mice.
As Colvin says, “Nanomaterials are a broad class of materials, and it is impossible to expect that all are safe. There probably will be some that are not too good for you.”
But the industry may yet be kept honest. The world’s second largest reinsurance firm, Swiss Re, still reeling from decades-old asbestos claims, warned in a May 2004 report that the present toxicity risks associated with nanoparticles are unacceptable. Without solid research demonstrating the safety of buckyballs, nanomanufacturers may be hard pressed to find anyone to insure them.
