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Buckyballs Kill Fish
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free registration, not too invasive) has a disturbing article on a new study of the environmental dangers of nanotech. Buckyballs caused "severe" brain damage in largemouth bass when added to their aquariums in concentrations of 0.5 ppm, a concentration level on par with common US pollutants. They also caused die-offs of Daphnia, waterfleas that are a crucial part of the ocean food chain. "The new findings are somewhat surprising because many scientists had predicted that buckyballs would not linger in water but would quickly form clumps and sink." The findings have yet to be peer-reviewed."
"Because of the novel arrangements of the atoms in these molecules -- and because the laws of physics behave differently at such scales -- nanoparticles display bizarre chemical properties."
The laws of physics do not behave differently on a HUGE carbon 60 molecule! The article fails to show what the buckyballs do to the fish or aquatic fleas. Does anyone have insight?
120 chars of filth!
Well, we're all going to die anyway.
Yes, but environmental poisoning makes the difference between dying at birth because your nervous system is so damaged it doesn't know how to make your heart operate - or dying from old age at 90.
I know you were joking about it, but still..
The word "nanotechnology" spans two competely different fields: nanomachines and nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials is what this article is about. The whole field of nanomaterials is exploitng the fact that extremely small particles of materials show physico-chemical behaviour different from that shown at larger scales. Not that the laws of pysics change as some people have said, but that tiny size has an effect upon which laws manifest. Some of those changes are useful - which is why people are researching them. Some are, surprise surprise, dangerous. You get that with any new invention - fire destroys as well as warms.
Nanomaterials are here, now. We need to worry about them like any other new chemical (which, in a way, is what they are - on the boundaries of chemistry and materials physics). But not more. Of course they should be tested - and guess what, they are, as this article shows. No more (or less) of a risk than any of the hundreds of new chemicals which emerge every year. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Nanomachines are a totally different question. Nanomachines are extremely tiny machines build up either from molecules, or by using silicon engineering developed for microchips to machine silicon (actually two very different technologies lumped together, but so be it). Apart from a few very crude devices, nanomachines are still a long way from any serious production.
People have hypothesized that it might be possible to build self-replicating nanomachines, and that such self-replicationg nanomachines might replicate so fast as to take over the world and reduce it to "grey goo". While you cannot say that this is absolutely impossible, it is very, very far ahead of anything even dreamed off. While a few useful widgets might emerge in the next few years, such gadgets are orders of magnitude away from anything presenting a serious risk to people at large.
(And, actually, I believe we already have self-replicating nanomachines: they are called viruses).
But, because of the confusion of the two terminologies, people are saying "Panic about what nanomachines might do because nanomaterials are here now".
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Please remember that we are composed primarily of organic compounds... we react in a serious way to molecular carbon. All life on the planet reacts in a serious way to molecular carbon.
Carbon fibers, can and do penetrate cell walls. It's already been discovered that incredibly small concentrations of buckytube carbon fibers, can cause tremendous and unexpectedly servere lung damage, and that those bucky tubes quickly begin dispersing through the other tissues in the body with potentially serious and unpredictable impacts.
Buckyballs can transport metal ions into places metal ions normally can't go in our bodies. Buckyballs can pass easily through the blood brain barrier, and there's no information yet on their impact to neural, blood, or critical organ tissues.
Seeing as nature decided to use carbon as it's primary source of nanotech, and that we are almost certainly going to do the same, we would be wise to make sure that our creations are minimally compatible, and interoperable to the existing machines. To not take these issues into consideration, is to risk unprecedented damage to our environment, and ourselves.
Genda
i hate to sound anal about this, but what does buckminsterfullerene have to do with nanotechnology? i realize they could be used for nanotechnology, but C60 is just a big molecule. there's no nanotech involved in making fullerenes; you can build a carbon arc in your garage if you want to have them. no microscopic manipulation required. you separate them out.... using a solvent. this isn't nanotech, it's chemistry. whoever wrote this article should think before using buzzwords.
also, interestingly, it should be noted that the toxicity of fullerenes isn't a surprise; when richard smalley and company came up with the fullerene structure in the mid-80's, everyone assumed they were toxic (the molecules, not the scientists). most chemicals with a benzene ring (benzene, toluene, PAHs) are pretty nasty stuff; a buckminsterfullerene molecule has 20 benzene rings in it. it would be a miracle if it weren't toxic.
so anyway, in this article, a group of scientists used well-established chemistry techniques to create an aromatic carbon molecule, and showed that it's toxic. why is this news?