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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."
Well, we're all going to die anyway.
But, if I had my choice in the matter, I'd want to die by the hands of something cool enough to be named buckyballs.
Imagine the death certificate. CAUSE: Buckyballs.
Imagine the eulogy. "It's so sad that he was taken from us so soon by buckyballs..."
Yeah, so, you still don't want buckyballs to kill you?
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
A buckyball is a carbon molecule that has 60 atoms in it and is shaped like a soccer ball. Google for Buckminster Fuller for more information.
AND NO, it's NOTHING DIRTY!!!!! (for once)
The buckyballs aren't getting into the fish and casuing brain damage, this is all a coverup for the escape of a very dangerous nanotechnology. Millions of nanobots are playing dodgeball with these buckyballs...sometimes the fish get in the way, and BAM, brain damage.
Bucky balls are the roundest and most symmetricle large molecule known to man. They were name after the Architect R. Buckminister Fuller who made geodesic domes.
"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!
*nods* A buckminster fullerene molecule (which is the actual name for the substance, is a very nice piece of chemical engineering. It shape is much like a football and it is big enough to contain atoms or molecules in its interior.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Buckyball is a colloquial term for the Buckminster-Fullerene, a molecule of 60 carbon atoms in the shape of a soccer ball. It was names after Buckminster-Fuller, an architect of domes with a similar structure.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Blueballs kill geeks, so I'm not feeling real sorry for the fish at this time.
Just another day in Paradise
"Any of various cagelike, hollow molecules composed of hexagonal and pentagonal groups of atoms, and especially those formed from carbon, that constitute the third form of carbon after diamond and graphite." dictionary.
In the dozen years since their discovery in 1985, the soccer-ball-shaped molecules of 60 or more carbon atoms now known as fullerenes have displayed a dazzling variety of tricks. Although real-world applications are still a way off, researchers have coaxed these "buckyballs" to become superconductors at low temperatures, emit light and carbon ion beams, and form many other compounds with different properties.
120 chars of filth!
Well, it's a third sort of pure carbon besides graphite and diamond. It has been discoverd just a few years ago, and the discovery of it has caused a complete new field (ever heared of carbon nanotubes?)
Also, it's AFAIK the largest object for which quantum interference has been shown yet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It makes me think about the time I lived in Virgina near the Appomattox River. The charming Allied Signal were developing Kepone, but after discovering it caused nerve damage to humans dumped it in the river. It remains today part of the muck... so toxic they won't consider dredging it.
I'm sure there are other examples of toxic waste which was assumed to be safe when it just became part of the muck... it just scares me that this is the logic used in may cases.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I knew it,
Soccer rots your brain.
A witty
From what I have read buckyballs have really neat conductive and structural properties. The article fails to state that there have been no commercially viable applications for the molecules. As long as that is true the fishes have little to worry about.
120 chars of filth!
I'm curious to find what other carbon nano-arrangements will do to sea life (or other life for that matter). What about carbon tubes? These appear to have numerous useful applications in superstrong carbon fibers. If we build a space elevator with carbon tubes, and the cable breaks, we can expect a whole lot of this carbon stuff to end up in the ocean. I remember that earlier experiments showed that carbon tubes did not pose an environmental risk, but I've never read what these experiments actually entailed.
:) I do not want to register, and adding the 'partner' thing to the URL somehow doesn't work for me.
And no, I didn't read the article
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Well, it's a third sort of pure carbon
It's allotropic form. And yes, I'm blatantly karma whoring.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
I didn't read the article myself, but instead went to google and searched for buckyballs. I didn't know anything about them before either, but I found this site to be particularly helpful. http://www.science.org.au/nova/024/024key.htm
The power of Christ compiles you.
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the coroner performing the autopsy as Elmer Fud,
but with a really bad stutter,
dictating the procedure into a recorder.
When buckyballs "steal" electrons, the buckyballs are reduced and whatever lost the electrons is oxidized.
Whenever something is oxidized, something else is reduced and vice versa.
Things that are easily reduced are good oxidizing agents; things that are easily oxidized are good reducing agents.
Despite the name, oxidation does not necessarily (or usually) involve oxygen; it refers to the change in oxidation number, and the term is just a vestige of a time when chemistry was less well understood.
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.
A way to create my ill tempered mutated sea bass!
At last, we have found a way to make Billy largemouth bass fish shut up for good...
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
'Do you have Buckyballs?' 'No, it's just the way I walk.'
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
...the mechanism they use to clump up is to bond with organic compounds, particularly fish brains.
The Washington Post (free registration, not too invasive)
The problem I have with the Washington Post registration is that their cookies are coming from some other domain than washingtonpost.com.
I've noticed this because I can allow washingtonpost.com but it still tells me to turn on cookies and won't allow me to register.
Well on the plus side they found this out before they started making a ton of products that use it. Compared to the 50's where you had commercials like "DDT it is good for you and it is good for me" (But not good for birds) and many other chemicals that got applications then found to be dangerous. At least now scientist are putting more research for in checking for safety then just assuming that something else will happen. Humility and good science works well together.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It should be noted that buckyballs were added to aquarium water with fish already in it, and damage was assessed after 48 hours.
Even a reasonably high level of toxicity might not be a major problem if the buckyballs are not persistent in a real-world environment. This is sort of like the short--half-life radioisotopes. They are more toxic precisely because they decay more rapidly, but if they have a half-life of a few days or less, disposal is simply a matter of letting them sit for a while.
The mechanism of effect needs to be determined to assess whether eating contaminated fish would have bad biological repercussions. If buckyballs are just really good oxidizing agents after being broken biologically, the residual effects would be minimal. If, on the other hand, the buckyballs are somehow acting catalytically or as immunological irritants, bioaccumulation could be likely and there would be a threat to humans from eating contaminated fish.
Unfortunately, there is precedent(bottom of page 7 of the PDF) for fullerenes acting as catalysts.
However, the paper linked to above also notes, "Fullerenes are also effective at mopping up free radicals, which damage living tissue. This has led to the suggestion that they might protect the skin in cosmetics, or help hinder neural damage caused by radicals in certain diseases, research on which in rats has already shown promise."[emphasis added] (page 9)
But then the same paper mentions that the size is similar to biologically active molecules, and has an affinity to an active site on an enzyme important to HIV.
It seems a thorough, well-designed toxicology study of fullerenes is in order. It is important that a study of the toxicity be done with conditions reasonably close to real world conditions.
Buckyballs are large, inflatable substitutes for banisters and cheese-boards. Traditionally carved out of frozen nougat, they are known to cause jealousy in lab rats.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Not salt water, they have nothign to do with the oceans ecosystem. I guess they just pulled protozoa form the air to get us whipped into a frenzy about. Did Jason Blair write this article?
I remember hearing somewhere that the black exhaust you typically get from a diesel truck as it goes through the first few gears after a dead stop is composed mostly of incomplete fullerines.
... Where it clearly states:
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
Lipids are a good portion of ALL tissue. Cell membranes are made primarilly of phospholipids (a nifty little molecule that forms walls due to its polar nature). Without lipids, there'd be nothing to hold your cells together, so you'd just be a puddle of cytoplasm (which would, like, suck).
So having buckyballs in your head, randomly destroying brain cell membranes would be a very bad th... Ooh! Look! A FISHY!!
> Buckballs are not molecular carbon. One would wonder the
> health problems induced by graphite pencils or diamonds!
You're wrong.
From here...
Fullerenes, or buckminsterfullerenes in full, are molecules composed entirely of carbon, taking the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube or ring.
Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of a sheet of linked hexagonal rings, but they contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that prevent the sheet from being planar. They are sometimes jocularly called buckyballs or buckytubes, depending on the shape.
Do not taunt aqueous buckyball!!
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Well, the structure and shape of things at these scales sometimes has an effect. Any one of a thousand possibilities. [diatomaceous earth] ... nothing really poisonous about the substance chemically, but the nanoscale fractured edges will cut into the insects and draw out moisture, killing them. ... an example of how the shape or structure of something can change its effect.
Another example: say you had a thousand lumps of metal. If you form them into cubes and throw them on the ground, they can be walked over relatively easily. If you form them into balls, it may be difficult to walk over them without stumbling. If you form them into caltrops, walking on them will cause injury. These properties are all independent of the raw effect of the metal itself.
Good points. Another example:
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow, CJD, etc.) is caused by deformed proteins (according to the prevailing, although hotly debated, "prion" theory).
Chemically, prions are "just proteins" -- but structurally, they're fucked up in some way which spreads the deformation to adjacent normal proteins.
-kgj
-kgj
OP comes from New Scientist, picked up by the Washington Post.
Check it out w/o registering:http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
This study was not needed.
The science is settled.
The consensus in the scientific world already decided that buckyballs sink.
Because the study has not yet been examined by peers in the scientific world, this can not be happening.
Scientists already decided buckyballs are safe.
There is no need to expend the effort in getting some of this "water" material and actually test it.
Because the results of buckyballs in water are already known, something must be wrong with this experiment.
Science is always right, this must be part of a smear campaign organized by opponents to science.
Obviously, the fish must have conspired to try to show science is wrong.
The fish must have pretended to have brain damage or caused the damage as part of the plot.
Stupid fish.
The buckyball can withstand slamming into a stainless steel plate at 15,000 mph, merely bouncing back, unharmed.
Hmmm... you don't see any commercial potential here?
Brain damage is usually caused by oxygen starvation. Could the buckyballs be absorbing the oxygen from the bloodstream?
The biggest and quickkest damage doesn't come from the oxygen starvation itself, but by the return of blood flow.
Brain cells metabolism is oxygen based and produces lots of free radicals - toxic by-products that are produced by oxagen metabolism. Normally that isn't a problem for our cells, because they also have the tools to control free-radicals production and degradation (with help of anti-oxydizer and well controlled reactions...)
When blood flow is cut, cells are suffering from the lack of oxygen but are still managing to survive for a short period in some way (brain cells aren't as good at fermentation....)
During this period they may undergo some damage but are still viable (DNA and basic protein synthesis tools may be still intact). The problem is : part of this damage can happen on metabolic tools that are intended to control free-radicals. During this period, it doesn't matter, because as the cell doesn't recieve oxygen, it doesn't produce free radicals
The problems arises when blood flow comes back : some cell (the less damaged from the lack of blood) survive, some other, although viable get killed because oxygen metabolism restarts and free-radicals are produced again... but the cells aren't able to cope with them anymore !
This phenomenon is called Reperfusion Damage, and lot of research is currently done to find way to minimise it (example : using anti-oxidizers).
[HINT : google this keywords for more information on the subjet]
To get back to the main subjet : as this buckyballs are known to be good oxidiser, it's very probable that their oxydizing propreties are exceeding brain's capacity of handling free radicals
other typical damage of free radicals : cataract (I wonder if they found it too on the fishes ?)
other tissus like muscles are less prone to free-radical damage, because it's easier for them to divide and replace damaged cells with new clean one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I think there might have been a post along this line in regards to nanotubes, and a portion of this link has some information on conflicting research on health risks. Given the nightmare that asbestos turned out to be, it seems to me (a big supporter of science and technology) that we need a 'go slow' approach with this stuff. There is no earth shattering compelling need for anything made of nanotubes or buckyballs today that can't wait a few years for accurate and conclusive testing.
And how, pray tell, are you going to shrink an atom?
" Speak for yourself. I wuld rather NOT die of brain-damage"
Well, you've got the brain damage part taken care of...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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?
There are some more details here on the mecahnism of the buckyball action.
9 99 94825
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
They found it to be moderately toxic, and to cause damage known as lipid peroxidation. This can impair the normal functioning of cell membranes and has been linked to illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease in humans. They also referred to other studies of both fullerenes and nanotubes causing lung damage.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Suppose you reduce the buckyball to the minimal number of C atoms, 1. You'd then get things like CO2, CH4, CH3OH, etc. None of these is biologically inert, though some are more active than others.
Or don't go to such an extreme. Reduce the BB to just a single C ring, say to one of the 6 C atom. If each takes on one water molecule, you get an H and an OH attached to each atom. This is a form of glucose, which is also biologically active.
If you take a piece of a BB that is one hex ring and an adjacent penta ring, and attach simple radicals to the dangling bonds, you get all sorts of interesting molecules, most of which are biologically active.
In general, clumps of C atoms smaller than a buckyball are rarely biologically inert. They have dangling or unstable bonds that interact with nearby molecules.
If you want to convert fullerenes to an inactive form, you need to make them much larger. Then they start to look locally like graphite. But graphite, while stable, isn't inert. Google for "graphite" and "catalyst", and you'll learn a lot about the subject. Graphite is a very common industrial catalyst, with small amounts of various atoms or small molecules attached to the C atoms.
One way I've seen this explained for non-physicists is to notice that in all these multi-carbon forms, each 6-C ring has three single and three double bonds. A double bond is less stable than a single bond (and a triple bond even less stable). So the C atoms on each end of a double bond are likely to break one of those bonds, and bond instead to passing atoms or molecules. Often the difference in bond strength isn't large, so it's easy for other passing molecules to steal away the attached clump of atoms, and the C then reverts to the double bond.
This is a "biochemistry for dummies" explanation of how carbon takes part in such a huge range of chemical reactions. But it gets across the idea that, when you see a ring of carbon atoms with a few double bonds, you are looking at a diagram of a molecule that is likely to interact with many other molecules in its vicinity. The underlying C ring will probably be fairly stable, but it has excess electron bonds that want to connect to something.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
How does someone diagnose "severe brain damage" in bass? Do they flop in a flamenco rhythm when pulled out of water? Do they play hooky from the rest of the school?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I guess you never went fishing. Quickest way to kill a fish is to take a stick and smash his head. The cranium folds inwards if you do it right, instant death.
I have a 70 gal aquarium indoors and a 3800 gal "aquarium" outdoor, and when someone tells me that they are keeping large-mouth bass in a 10 L aquarium and the fish suffered brain damage with-in 48 hours my first thought is what did you expect? and how did you keep the control group so healthy?.
I'm hoping that these guys research is totaly wacked because fullerenes aren't that hard to make and if they are realy that toxic, the implications are a bit staggering given the amount of genocidal activity in the world today.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Aren't viruses fulleresque? They kill fish, and others, too. As long as the second law of thermodynamics is in effect, we must assume anything we manufacture, however worthwhile, is disruptive, unless we learn otherwise.
--
make install -not war
Dumping toxic compounds into ecosystems is stupid, even if the compound in question doesn't directly damage humans. Remember, we live on this planet, in the biosphere, not separate from it. Functioning ecosystems are A Very Good Thing. Taking out major components of functioning ecosystems (if that really is a risk with fullerenes) is not so good.
R. Buckminster Fuller.
He wasn't just an archetect. He was also a philosopher, writer, teacher at Southern Illinois University, etc. His philosophy was very much informed by quantum mechanics.
I'd recommend "Manual For Spaceship Earth," if the examples weren't so dated and obviously from the era he wrote in.
And, IMO, his philosophies are much better than his architecture. Can't stand those domes.
Any reader of Robert Anton Wilson, or critic thereof, should at least look a little into Prof. Fuller. It will be, at least a little, enlightening.
Dan
The article does not mention that buckyballs are present in soot, and are already in the environment. What is the present level of buckyballs outdoors? What is it after natural wildfires?
I wonder if they did a control experiment - with soot. Also I would like to know how they dispersed fullernes in water - the fullies are terribly insoluble, greasy and tend to lump together. Unless you add a bit a detergent to make a stable slurry. Adding a trace of detergent into fish tank is a sure way how to make the fish very unhappy. I wonder if this brain damage could have been caused by insufficient oxygen because of mucked-up gills. Also, the comment about fullerenes being "more toxic than nickel but less toxic than copper" for aquatic life did not scare me too much. Copper is not a plutonium, and tap water in many cities in Arizona is quite rich in copper. (So much that the water stone sediment in sink sometimes has a bluish tint).
Breathing a microparticle dust is not a healthy habit, the manufacturers will have to protect their workers but I do not expect to see this as a big enviro problem.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I'd consider 48 hours still pretty short-term. Also, I would consider it cold comfort if the buckyballs didn't decompose but accumulated the sediment. Well, maybe buckyballs need the equivalent of condensation nuclei to quickly precipitate. I didn't see a detailed experimental procedure when I read the article, but it wouldn't be surprising if the water was relatively clean when the buckyballs were added. It would be ironic if it were simply too clean, and buckyballs didn't pose much of a threat in dirtier water.
Alternately, if the buckyballs are toxic because of oxidative power, perhaps in dirtier water they would be reduced to harmless byproducts by oxidizing material in the water.
However, these are just possibilities, and the prospect of buckyballs acting as biologically-active catalysts is a bit disturbing. I'm starting graduate study in physical chemistry this fall, so I hope to read more extensive toxicity studies before I decide what research area to pursue.