Just the other day I drank a fitness-type neon coloured drink, which I never do, and felt sick the whole day. Now I read about companies not warning us that their stuff contains nano-parts which can cross the bloodstream and enter brain tissue. I think it was a drink where nano-molecules emit ‘vitamin burst’ at intervals.
The growing use of nanotechnology will be debated by MEPs Tuesday 24 March 'Nanofood' doesn't sound incredibly tasty but the chances are that you have already eaten food produced using nanotechnology - the manipulation of materials one-millionth the size of a pinhead. It is increasingly used in additives, flouring or anti-bacterial ingredients for food. On Tuesday MEPs will debate a report from the Environment Committee that wants risk assessments nanofoods and calls for labelling if used. The report also rejects any use of food from cloned animals. Nanotechnology is favoured by many food producers as it can ensure food stays fresh longer and reduces sensitivity to heat, making transport easier.
Tuesday's debate in Strasbourg forms part of the review of the "Novel foods regulation" which covers food not eaten widely in the European Union before May 1997, when the legislation on novel foods was first established. Quotation.There is no legislation and no uniform risk assessment procedure Kartika-Tamara Liotard MEP The use of nanotechnology in foods falls into this category and many MEPs on the Environment Committee are concerned that the impact on human health has not been properly investigated.
Dutch MEP Kartika-Tamara Liotard is guiding the legislation through Parliament. She told us "at the moment, without the consumer being aware, a lot of food products and packaging already contain nanomaterials, even though there is no legislation and no uniform risk assessment procedure." She said the safety of the consumer must be paramount.
quote: Nanotechnology food coming to a fridge near you (Nanowerk Spotlight) The potential benefits of Nanofoods – foods produced using nanotechnology – are astonishing. Advocates of the technology promise improved food processing, packaging and safety; enhanced flavor and nutrition; ‘functional foods’ where everyday foods carry medicines and supplements, and increased production and cost-effectiveness. In a world where thousands of people starve each day, increased production alone is enough to warrant worldwide support. For the past few years, the food industry has been investing millions of dollars in nanotechnology research and development. Some of the world’s largest food manufacturers, including Nestle, Altria, H.J. Heinz and Unilever, are blazing the trail, while hundreds of smaller companies follow their lead. Yet, despite the potential benefits, compared with other nanotechnology arenas, nanofoods don't get a lot of publicity. The ongoing debate over nanofood safety and regulations has slowed the introduction of nanofood products, but research and development continue to thrive - though, interestingly, most of the larger companies are keeping their activities quiet (when you search for the term 'nano' or nanotechnology' on the websites of Kraft, Nestle, Heinz and Altria you get exactly zero results). Although the risks associated with nanotechnology in other areas, such as cosmetics and medicine, are equally blurry, it seems the difference is that the public is far less apt to jump on the nanotechnology bandwagon when it comes to their food supply.
i would never drink somethin that is a neon color thats just not normal...and if it glows in the dark dont drink it...
Posted by Egmond Codfried (Member # 15683) on :
quote:Originally posted by tina kamal: i would never drink somethin that is a neon color thats just not normal...and if it glows in the dark dont drink it...
Well, you know how things go. One does not want to come of too old fashioned and paranoid. Everyone around you seems to swivel this stuff, so you think: let's give it a try. But now I know from first hand that it's lethal stuff. I only now also found out that all the people who work in libraries spy on us, no matter what you are told. In fact by entering the internet, by sending stuff over the net we are handing over our mail to anyone who wants to read.
Posted by Egmond Codfried (Member # 15683) on :
Welcome to the world of nano foods
'I'd like to drink a glass of water and know that the contents are going into my stomach - not my lungs. We are giving very toxic chemicals the ability to go where they've never gone before'
Alex Renton guardian.co.uk
Willy Wonka is the father of nano-food. The great chocolate- factory owner, you'll remember, invented a chewing gum that was a full three-course dinner. 'It will be the end of all kitchens and cooking,' he told the children on his tour - and produced a prototype sample of Wonka's Magic Chewing Gum. One strip of this would deliver tomato soup, roast beef with roast potatoes and blueberry pie and ice cream. In the right order. Violet Beauregarde snatched it, swiftly ate it and, at the pudding stage, turned bright purple and blew up to three times her size.
Far-fetched? The processed-food giant Kraft and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards 'programmable food'. One product they are working on is a colourless, tasteless drink that you, the consumer, will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what colour and flavour you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too. This will activate nano-capsules - each one about 2,000 times smaller than the width of a hair - containing the necessary chemicals for your choice of drink: green-hued, blackcurrant-flavoured with a touch of caffeine and omega-3 oil, say. They will dissolve while all the other possible ingredients will pass unused through your body, in their nano-capsules.
The end of cooking? Probably not. Catch me having friends round for a programmable nanocola? Not more than once. But our reaction to some of the dafter promises of the new science is not really relevant. You may not want it, but the food industry does. Every major food corporation is investing in nano-tech - government in Europe has pumped £1.7 billion in research money into the field over the past eight years. Nano-food and nano-food packaging are on their way because the food industry has spotted the chance for huge profi ts: by 2010, the business, according to analysts, will be worth $20 billion annually. And there is already a prototype of a Wonka-esque chewing gum that, using nano-capsules, promises the sensation of eating real chocolate.
The food industry is hooked on nano-tech's promises, but it is also very nervous. At a conference in Amsterdam to discuss nano-technology, food and health, I found representatives of all the big food corporations, mixing with some bumptious academics, all thrilled with their latest nano-applications, and some less gung-ho bioethicists.
The food people included Unilever, Kraft, Cadbury Schweppes, Tate & Lyle and Glaxo-SmithKline: they were very shy and entirely off the record, if they spoke at all. I was having a friendly chat with a research scientist from Numico, the European baby-foods giant (their brands include Milupa and Cow & Gate) until he found out I was a journalist. Then he refused to tell me his name and asked me to erase the word 'Numico' from my notebook. I thought he was going to snatch it away. It's obvious why they were edgy. Consumers are not ready for nano-food. Among some scientists in the field there is a real sense that nano-technology, in food at least, is a revolution that may die in its cradle - rejected by a public that has lost its trust in scientists and its patience with industry's profi t-driven fooling with what we eat.
At the conference, the media was blamed, of course. The only journalist there, I got some eggs thrown at me. Ignorant, sensationalist journalism was holding back progress, fuelling the public's 'irrational' reaction to novel food processes. But Lynn Frewer, professor of food safety and consumer behaviour at Wageningen University, a leading centre of nano-tech research in the Netherlands, called the scientists to order. It was the public's irrational fears that needed addressing, she said: 'It's human nature. An involuntary risk, however remote, concerns people far more than one over which they have a choice. That's why the public find gene technology more threatening than eating fatty, unhealthy food.'
After the debates over GMO [genetically modified organisms] and BSE, she said, public faith is very low, not just in the food industry but also the food regulators. 'The mechanisms to make [them] transparent must be put in place and enshrined - there need to be principles that the public can understand.'
Dr David Bennett, a veteran biochemist now working on a European Commission project on the ethics of 'nanobiotechnology', felt the prospect was bleak. He thought public rejection of nanotechnology was 'almost certain'. 'Very little risk assessment has been done on this area, even on some products already entering the market - and it's an open question whether it will be done. To Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, it's a gift.' And, he went on, the lack of proper assessment of nanotechnology 'scares me shitless'.
What's to be afraid of, from a technology that offers so much - healthier food, fewer, better targeted chemicals, less waste, 'smart' (and thus less) packaging, and even the promise of a technological solution to the problem of the one billion people who don't get enough to eat? Amid the papers on issues such as 'application of nano-filtration for demineralisation of twarog acid whey' (which will boost the yield in ice cream and yoghurt production) one much-discussed question in Amsterdam was how government should regulate the arrival of nano in the household. There are no new rules in Europe, and some voices - including the man from Unilever's research labs - dismissed the need for any. Nanotech is natural, he insisted: it uses no new substances, just the same ones smaller. But other scientists in the field disagree.
'Matter has different behaviour at nano-scales,' said Dr Kees Eijkel from the Dutch Twente University. 'That means diff erent risks are associated with it. We don't know what the risks are and the current regulations [on the introduction of new food processes] don't take that into account.'
Aluminium, for example, is stable in the 'big world' but an explosive at nano-levels. Some of the carbon nano-structures that are being used in electronics have been shown to be highly toxic if released into the environment. Some metals will kill bacteria at nano-scale - hence the interest in using them in food packaging - but what will happen if they get off the packaging and into us? No one seems to know - and as signifi cant a body as the UK's Royal Society has expressed worries over the lack of research into the health implications of free nano particles being introduced to our environment.
The size question is central to these concerns. Nano particles that are under 100 nano-meters wide - less than the size of a virus - have unique abilities. They can cross the body's natural barriers, entering into cells or through the liver into the bloodstream or even through the cell wall surrounding the brain.
'I'd like to drink a glass of water and know that the contents are going into my stomach and not into my lungs,' says Dr Qasim Chaudhry of the British government's Central Science Laboratory. 'We are giving very toxic chemicals the ability to cross cell membranes, to go where they've never gone before. Where will they end up? It has been shown that free nano-particles inhaled can go straight to the brain. There's lots of concerns. We have to ask - do the benefi ts outweigh the risks?'
Asbestos is the analogy everyone comes up with. Sixty years ago, the stable, cheap building material helped war-devastated Europe put up housing quickly, until it was discovered that asbestos micro-fi bres, once free, could cause hideous and lethal damage to the lungs.
Dr Chaudhry has been leading a team of researchers reporting to the government's Food Standards Agency on nanotechnology and safety. He is worried that the health research is way behind the technology and that a whole range of tests has not been carried out - for instance, on the nano-compounds already being tested for water cleaning in Third World countries. Dr Chaudry's team has told the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Aff airs that it thought companies and researchers introducing nanoproducts should be obliged to notify the authorities about them. DEFRA agreed and launched the list scheme in September, but decided notification should be voluntary, not mandatory. And you and I cannot see the list - it will, out of respect to commercial interests, be kept secret.
This doesn't sound like the sort of openness that will soothe a concerned public, all too wary nowadays of the reassurances of the food industry and science . But the FSA, which is awaiting the results next year of two research projects into nano-tech, food and safety, says it is confident that existing regulations on 'novel' foods, additives and food processes will cover any new products. And, at the moment, it doesn't believe there is any nano-tech in food in Britain - though some scientists think that is wrong.
As with GM, we may be overtaken by events in the States, where food regulators have, under the Bush presidency, been steam-rollered by a food industry eager to push in the new technology. So far, however, the list of kitchen nano-products actually on American shelves is unimpressive. The Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington research institute, runs a database of nano-tech products that are commercially available, and the list under Food and Beverage is only 29 products long, compared with 201 under Health and Fitness (I'm excited by the nano-silverised self-cleaning socks). But the list has grown 50 per cent since March, when it was only 19 products long.
Most of these products are self-cleaning and anti-bacterial food-packaging items : cutting boards and so on. There's a couple of Samsung nano-silverised refrigerators. There are nutritional supplements, under the well-established American brand Nanoceuticals. There's a Vitamin B12 spray marketed by Nutrition-by-Nanotech. You simply catch a child with an open mouth and spray the stuff straight in: they'll absorb the nano-sized vitamins directly through the mucal cells. 'Tastes like candy... Would you believe it, they are asking for more!' runs the copy line, less than enticingly.
Only three items on the Woodrow Wilson list are listed as food. One is 'Nanotea', from a Chinese company, that will increase tenfold the amount of selenium absorbed from green tea (that's a good thing), through capsules engineered to bypass the stomach and dissolve in your lower gut. There's Canola Activa Oil, an Israeli invention: nano-capsule-delivered chemicals in rapeseed cooking oil that will stop cholesterol entering the bloodstream - this is exciting technology, utilising nano's ability to suspend or dissolve any substance you like in water or in oil. And fi nally there's SlimShake chocolate - a powdered drink that uses nanotechnology to cluster the cocoa cells, and thus cut out the need for sugar.
More important, what of the promise that nanotechnology offers hope to the one billion habitually undernourished on the planet? Nothing yet. Dr Donald Bruce, a chemist who heads a group examining technology and ethics for the Church of Scotland, is doubtful. He sat on a committee 10 years ago examining the moral implications of the introduction of GM. 'The public were told that genetic modifi cation was going to feed the world. And so we looked for evidence of any application of that science that had addressed the needs of a poor subsistence farmer. We couldn't fi nd any. The industry went for agronomic benefits, not for people benefits.'
With nano-tech, the food industry has once again got it back to front, he feels. ' Such innovation must be consumer-led - the consumer must be able to see what's in it for them.' Violet Beauregarde would certainly agree.
Arrival of the nano state Self-cleaning fridges, turning red wine into white - the future's tiny
What is it?
Tiny technology with big results Nanotechnology is the science of the tiny - the precision engineering of substances at molecular and atomic level. The scale is amazingly small. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter: the width of a human hair is 80,000 nanometers and this industry is manufacturing complex nanomaterials 30 nm wide or less.
The industry exploits the fact that physics and chemistry change at nano-scale and common substances behave very diff erently - thus many of the metals and chemicals that industry works with take on startling new properties. 'It's like having a brand new tool box,' says one enthusiastic scientist. The uses these tools can be put to are amazing but, like any only partially explored and tested technology, potentially dangerous. Nanotech is all around you, already: in clothing, electronics, manufacturing and increasingly in health and cosmetics. If you buy a clear sunscreen that promises it blocks ultraviolet light, it is using nano-particles of metals like zinc or titanium - it's clear because the particles are too small to aff ect ordinary light. L'Oreal (backed by the food company Nestlé) is marketing anti-ageing cosmetics that exploit the tininess of the particles, 'nanosomes', and their ability to penetrate deep into skin cells.
Nano in the kitchen
Bacteria-bashing and choice of colour As yet there are officially no foods on sale in Europe that contain nanomaterials, though they exist in the States. But regulation is very light and food, along with health products, are high on an excited industry's target list - that's where big money is.
Nano-packaging with 'self-cleaning' abilities will be the first application you'll see - but the science behind that isn't very different from that in the 'anti-bacterial' food containers on sale now. It is with nano-engineered food ingredients that things get mind-boggling. Just arriving are techniques that will turn established food chemistry and processing upside-down. Precisely- engineered nano-scale filters allow you to remove all bacteria from milk or water without boiling. Or take the red out of red wine. Water into oil doesn't go? Nano-encapsulation technology can already allow you to dissolve as much oil in water, and the other way round, as you wish. It does this by encasing the water or oil molecules individually in capsules that the liquid will accept. This has enormous implications for altering the fats and salt content of our foods. For cooks, it will turn sauce-making on its head, allowing the emulsifi cation of any two liquids - just for starters, that's a vinaigrette you won't have to stir together before pouring. The nanocapsules, 2,000 times narrower than a hair, allow the suspension of almost any substance in clear liquids, without altering their look, or giving any taste.
Nano-delivery systems are already making feeding via our stomach out of date: nano-encapsulation can deliver nutrients - and anything else - through the mucal walls in your mouth, or your nose or via your lower gut. This is scary, though useful: many nutrients are destroyed or wasted by the digestive process; releasing them later is a way of ensuring that much more of the substance enters the bloodstream. Already nano-capsule cases are being made that are resistant to stomach acid but can be broken down further on in the digestive process, say, by the bacteria in the colon.
Nano researchers talk of being able ultimately to design nano-capsule delivery systems that will take any substance to any part of the body. In the kitchen, the promise is that, with microbiochemistry and nanotechnology, chefs will one day be able to pin down tastes, textures and colours and deliver them to order. They will be able to design dishes at molecular level and build the food that you receive on your plate just as a composer chooses the notes that an orchestra plays. Heston Blumenthal should relax, though - that's a long way ahead.
Nano now
Chocolate-flavoured chewing gum, milk that tells you when it's off Thanks to nano-encapsulation (see above), some truly Willy Wonka-ish nano products are on their way. An American company has claimed to have created 'the Holy Grail of chewing-gum design' - chewing gum with real chocolate in it. Hazelnut-cappucino fl avour is next. You'll first meet nanotechnology in food packaging. Most people have heard about the 'smart' food packaging that will warn when oxygen has got inside, or if food is going off - research on that is complete and the products are arriving.
Samsung has fridges on the market in Asia and America that use nano-silver to kill bacteria. Already in use in brewing and dairy production are nano-filters - screens so small they can fi lter out micro-organisms and even viruses. In lab experiments, the colour has been removed from beetroot juice, leaving the fl avour; and red wine turned into white. Lactose can now be filtered from milk, and replaced with another sugar - making all milk suitable for the lactose-intolerant. This could mean less use of chemicals and heat treatments in food processing.
Also available in American supermarkets is cooking oil that, in theory, can be kept fresh and soluble forever - thanks to nano-ceramic particles that enable clustering of dirt molecules. Nano-engineered molecules, which lock onto contaminants, will simplify the process of cleaning drinking water - potentially hugely important for the developing world. Parents are a big market for nano, obviously. Nano-encapsulation means no more bribing your kids to eat fruit and oily fish: vitamin C-enriched cooking oil and omega-3 fi sh oil-carrying juices are already available. In Australia, you can buy a bread - Tip-Top - that contains undetectable nano-capsules of omega-3.
Nano soon
Teeth cleaning chewing gum, self-cleaning cutlery
Fancy a programmable drink? Beverage companies such as Kraft are working on prototypes of soft drinks containing nano-capsules that will carry a range of fl avours, colours, preservatives or nutrients. You buy the drink and then choose which elements to activate. Your milk carton will tell you when its contents are sour, thanks to particles that sense the gases of decomposition and change colour, and nano-molecules in the ink on the label that tell you how old it is and duly change colour. Kraft and Unilever have products on test.
The food industry is excited about sell-by dates and self-preserving food. Nano-coatings will make the life span of manufactured food even longer. Mars has a US patent for nano-scale fi lms that have been tested on M&Ms, Twix and Skittles. The coatings are made from oxides of silicon or titanium, are undetectable, could kill bacteria, and would increase the life of many manufactured foods, even after they are opened.
Packaging that absorbs oxygen, making food last longer, is on its way. Kodak already has it in development for photographic film. Food manufacturers including Unilever and Nestlé plan to use nano-encapsulation to improve shelf life and engineer taste sensations in fat-based foods like chocolates, ice creams and spreads. There could be huge reductions in fats and salts in processed foods. Unilever believes it can reduce the fat content of ice cream from 15 per cent to one per cent.
When it comes to chewing gum, nano-particles will shortly be able to carry teeth-cleaning chemicals that you won't be able to taste. Pleasing to the lazy, as will be self-cleansing cutlery, an advance made possible by the engineering, at atomic level, of hydrophobic surfaces that allow substances to break down and drop off . This is already in use with industrial glass products. Nano-fi lters will allow you to choose the amount of caffeine you want to remove from your coff ee. Making tap water sterile should be possible too.
Nano-scale sensors are in development that will monitor toxins and bacteria at all stages of food processing. This will help producers spot salmonella in chickens, or E-coli in spinach, long before the products reach the shops. Self-monitoring food packaging will mature into technology like the nano-tongue. Wired into your fridge, it will detect and warn you of a whole range of chemicals given off by rotting food, or the presence of bacteria. And then clean them.
Nano in the future
Interactive chicken, nano-noses
Atomic-level encapsulation techniques will get more sophisticated. Food processors will offer engineered food catering to your specific tastes, and all sort of options to shoppers. If your chicken is going to sit in the fridge for a while, just activate the nano-encapsulated preservatives held dormant in its flesh. Fancy a fillet with a tarragon-and-butter taste? Trigger a different nano-capsule. Nano-encapsulation could let chefs choose, exactly, how strong a taste or smell should be and when it should be delivered, and design a food's mouth-feel. The capsule's casing is to be made of substances ranging from starches, proteins and fats, and can be tailored to break down and release its contents to order.
A chef might decide that some flavours in his dish would only be released to the eater a certain number of seconds or minutes after chewing, or when they sip a glass of wine. Another nano-system to excite cooks uses stable molecules to tie down volatile ones: manufactured starch such as cyclodextrin is being used to bond to those frustratingly evanescent fl avours in food - like the fast-fading taste of dill, for example. The perfume industry is already using this to make scents perform longer.
Go food shopping, or out to a restaurant, and you could carry your own nano-nose, a personal tasting sensor programmed to test food for things you don't like, or chemicals and allergens which may make you ill. Meanwhile, nano-sized bar codes will enable random molecules of an animal's meat to be tagged and monitored from farm to every end product.
Further ahead, the industry is looking at food that is pre-engineered to cater for your tastes, your dislikes and your allergies. Or just built from scratch. Ultimately, says Franz Kampers, a scientist at the Netherland's Wageningen University, 'The Holy Grail of the food industry is to create something like this' - he shows a picture of a glistening roast turkey with all the trimmings - 'from plant protein. That would be really something!'. You may not want it, but the scientists are already halfway there.
A Consumer Guide for Avoiding Nano-Sunscreens Sun worshippers beware. While using sunscreen to block dangerous UV rays, you may be exposing yourself to a new danger.
Sunscreen manufacturers are adding nanoparticles to sunscreens to make sun-blocking ingredients like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide rub on clear instead of white. These nanoparticles are being added without appropriate labeling or reliable safety information—and they pose potential threats to human health.
Friends of the Earth asked more than 120 sunscreen manufacturers to describe their companies’ policies regarding nanotechnology and whether their products contain nanoparticles, but the vast majority of manufacturers refused. This underscores the challenge that consumers face when trying to determine if their sunscreens are safe, which is why FDA regulation and labeling requirements are urgently needed.
In the meantime, Friends of the Earth has compiled a guide to alert consumers to the risks that may come from sunscreens with nanoparticles and a list of nine sunscreen brands that are nano free. To learn more about nanomaterials in sunscreens, and how to limit your risk of exposure, visit our guide.
Resources Here is the full text of the report with more information about the damage nanoparticles could cause. For more information on the findings of the report, please contact Health and Environment Campaigner Ian Illuminato at iilluminato@foe.org or 202-783-7400.
Also, here is our standalone list of the sunscreens that do, don't or may contain nanoparticles.
You can also listen to an audio recording of Illuminato and Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder discussing the consumer guide. Blackwelder speaks first, Illuminato second.
We asked 128 cosmetics companies whether they were using nanotechnology, which is largely untested and may pose real dangers to human health, in making their skin products. See a copy of the letter we sent them, and our follow-up letters here and here.
These are the only nine who now confirmed that they have kept nanoparticles out of their products and their customers out of harm:
Alba Botanica Allergan Avalon Organics Black Opal Blistex Chattem, Inc. -- Bullfrog Lakeview Laboratories -- Tatoo Goo Lavera Schwarzkopf & Henkel
And please remember to sign Friends of the Earth's petition calling on the Food and Drug Administration to introduce sensible rules for testing nanotechnology in order to protect consumers, workers, and the environment.
Posted by Egmond Codfried (Member # 15683) on :
What are the Possible Dangers of Nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is a branch of science that deals with particles 1-100 nanometers in size. Experts believe possible dangers of nanotechnology lie in how these tiny particles might interact with the environment, and more importantly, with the human body. Billions of dollars are being spent to incorporate nanoparticles into products that are already being marketed to the public; when this investment is compared to the the comparatively scant research into nanotech health issues, some scientists become concerned.
Experts say the issue is that elements encountered at the nanoscale behave differently than their larger counterparts. As an example, graphite's properties are well known and it holds specific position in toxicology guidelines. Nobel winning physicist Richard Smalley of Rice University discovered carbon nanotubes and fullerenes (buckyballs) — nanoparticles of carbon — which are legally categorized as graphite, yet they behave in ways unlike graphite making the classification a potentially dangerous one.
Case in point: in March 2004 tests conducted by environmental toxicologist Eva Oberdörster, Ph.D., with Southern Methodist University in Texas found extensive brain damage to fish exposed to fullerenes for a period of just 48 hours at a relatively moderate dose of 0.5 parts per million (commiserate with levels of other kinds of pollution found in bays). The fish also exhibited changed gene markers in their livers, indicating their entire physiology was affected. In a concurrent test, the fullerenes killed water fleas, an important link in the marine food chain.
Oberdörster could not say whether fullerenes would also cause brain damage in humans but cautioned that more studies are necessary and that the accumulation of fullerenes over time could be a concern, particularly if they were allowed to enter the food chain. Earlier studies in 2002 by CBEN (Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology) indicated nanoparticles accumulated in the bodies of lab animals, and still other studies showed fullerenes travel freely through soil and could be absorbed by earthworms. This is a potential link up the food chain to humans and presents one of the possible dangers of nanotechnology.
Other nanoparticles have also been shown to have adverse effects. Research from University of California in San Diego in early 2002 revealed cadmium selenide nanoparticles, also called quantum dots, can cause cadmium poisoning in humans. In 2004 British scientist Vyvyan Howard published initial findings that indicated gold nanoparticles might move through a mother's placenta to the fetus; and as far back as 1997 scientists at Oxford discovered nanoparticles used in sunscreen created free radicals that damaged DNA.
Complicating the dangers of nanotechnology, size and shape of nanoparticles affect the level of toxicity, preempting the ease of uniform categories even when considering a single element. In general, experts report smaller particles are more bioactive and toxic. Their ability to interact with other living systems increases because they can easily cross the skin, lung, and in some cases the blood/brain barriers. Once inside the body, there may be further biochemical reactions like the creation of free radicals that damage cells.
While the body has built-in defenses for natural particles it encounters, the danger of nanotechnology is that it is introducing entirely new type of particles. Particles some experts say the body is likely to find toxic.
Highest at risk are workers employed by manufacturers producing products that contain nanoparticles. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports over 2 million Americans are exposed to high levels of nanoparticles and they believe this figure will rise to 4 million in the near future. NIOSH publishes safety guidelines and other information for those employed in the nanoindustry.
There is no doubt that nanoparticles have interesting and useful properties. That said, many groups propose a moratorium on marketing and urge research to precede manufacturing rather than proceed it. Strong economic drives and competition in the marketplace may be taking precedence over methodical scientific prudence when it comes to public health and possible dangers of nanotechnology.
Some have compared the situation to that of asbestos dust -- another material that was assumed safe until it was learned that it can cause cancer from accumulation in the body. Today 3,000 deaths per year are still attributed to asbestos from decades-old use. Those concerned with possible dangers of nanotechnology wish to avoid a similar or even worse scenario down the road, especially considering the growing market for nanoparticles in such diverse products as car paint, tennis rackets, and make-up.
Nanotechnology should not be confused with molecular nanotechnology (MNT) a still theoretical science dedicated to manufacturing products from the atom up through use of nanoscale machines. MNT is spearheaded by physicist Dr. Eric Drexler, who coined the term, "nanotechnology" and later, "molecular nanotechnology."
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New: Discuss this Article Posted by: anon18988 People laugh and make jokes, but this is a serious issue. At least the questions we ask about nanotechnology and human health are very serious. If we cannot but be cynical when discussing potential destruction of human health, what kind of intelligence do we have. Why must we presume that all technology must be upheld at the expense of human life, even if all of the scientific facts are not "in"? what does that mean anyway??? The atomic bomb was "progressive technology." Life forms are already showing damage after interacting with nanoparticles, Observation and a little hypothesizing would bring one to the same conclusions given the structure and size of these particles, and the nature of human physiology and anatomy. We are self-destructive by default based on unending greed. Posted by: anon17170 Maybe we can hide under a rock or something, after all, nano zombies are afraid of the dark... Posted by: anon16222 We must stop the nano zombies!!! Posted by: anon14841 Nanotechnolgy. The benefits for manufacturing and medical use could be endless but I guarantee you, the biggest budget nanoscience will get will be for military use. Posted by: manisomani I have bought BIODISC. I want to know is it safe to use BIODISC?? Does BIODISC helps in relieving pain and give energy?
Posted by: anon9586 Your comments are, quite frankly, farcical. In what scientific or peer-reviewed literature have you found evidence of your proposed 'zombie state'? As yet, no experimental evidence has been found to implicate that nanoparticles have a) entered the systemic circulation in a substantial amount to travel to the brain, and b) crossed the blood-brain barrier to accumulate and cause cytotoxic effects. It is well documented that nanoparticles generated as a result of the burning of fossil fuels (combustion-derived nanoparticles) can have some cytotoxic effects especially in the pulmonary system, but until more detailed knowledge is generated your claims are laughable at best. Posted by: anon9263 I am interested in the dangers that nanotechnology can cause. Do to some of the things that I have read up on, nanotechnology can and will cause more than just cancer. What about the brain damage that it can cause. I read that nanotechnology can cause what I like to call a zombie outbreak. It takes over the mind and uses the human body like a host. Once the body can no longer be used it tries to take over another body leading to a kind of zombie like state. Even though it might sound far fetched it must also be taken into consideration because of some of the information that I have gathered, it can very possibly resort to the end of mankind. Post your questions or comments about this article!
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Posted by neeb55 (Member # 22894) on :
That is kinda over the top reaction. There are nanomaterials being used in many industries but I highly doubt that simple energy drink is a case. Still these materials are nowhere near cheap. Try to visit for example this site and check for yourself. Not saying that nanomaterials cant be dangerous but there is a very extensive research trying to find a possible problem.
