Nano News
With federal funding for nanotechnology research now exceeding $1 billion a year, and industrial scale production of nanomaterials beginning — Japan-based Frontier Carbon Corp. plans to manufacture 1,500 tons of buckyballs this year — scientists are scrambling to determine the environmental impact.
Earlier this year Eva Oberdorster, an environmental toxicologist with Southern Methodist University, found that largemouth bass exposed to high doses of buckyballs had brain damage.
The Rice findings support Oberdorster's results...
The Rice team studied the effects of buckyballs and three modified forms on human skin and liver cells. At a level of 20 parts per billion, the plain buckyballs killed half the cells.
The modified forms were found to be 1,000 to 10 million times less toxic. The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters...
One concern, Oberdorster said, is that related work has shown that UV light, which comes from the sun, can break off the chemical modifications on buckyballs.
If the modified buckyballs were introduced into a natural environment, then, they might return to a toxic state.
press release
~Two questions immediately come to mind: Will the 1,500 tons of buckyballs now being manufactured be "modified"? If not, when will the industry feel compelled to do so?
[Ans: (from above): "The new research means that academic groups and companies developing nanomaterials will have to consider the toxicity of their new particles".]