Slashdot Mirror
Can Asbestos Help Us Understand Nanotoxicity?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Occupational Hazards is running an interesting article about how using our knowledge of asbestos could help us to assess the risks from nanoparticles, or their nanotoxicity. Today, it's unknown if nanomaterials under development are dangerous to human beings or to our environment. Some people think that nanoparticles can move to our lungs or our brains, presenting a significant threat to our health. Other scientists think there is no danger because we have been exposed to nanoparticles for thousands of years, such as ashes from volcanic eruptions. For example, nanotubes which are now used for many industrial developments, have similar shapes as fibers like asbestos, being long and extremely thin. And like nanomaterials today, asbestos was considered as harmless when humans were exposed to it. While the comparison has some merit, more research needs to be done before drawing any conclusion."
Boihazard == Bad
Nanotoxins == Bad
What part of dead are you having trouble understanding?
Weird, occupationalhazards.com isn't registered to Roland Piquepaille. What's the catch?
This looks to be the second article in a row from the esteemed Monsieur Piquepaille that doesn't link to an article in his blog. Check out his story posting history:
Can asbestos help us understand nanotoxicity? Wed Oct 19, '05 12:23 PM
Pillows Dangerous for Your Health Sat Oct 15, '05 12:28 PM
Molecular Gastronomy, The Science of Cooking Mon Aug 29, '05 11:32 AM
The Eyes of the Space Shuttle Wed Aug 03, '05 12:58 PM
BIG gap between the two latest non-self-referential stories, and the weekly shameless self-promotion that used to be his trademark.
I suspect that somebody either gave Mr. P a stern talking-to, or more likely the editors just quit accepting his stories. Now, he's back, chastened and better for it. You've got to admit, the guy has an eye for science stories. He's just got to have confidence that if he posts good stuff, the click-throughs to his main page (linked appropriately to his name) will follow in time.
I'm all for shameless self-promotion, of course, but I'm content with the URL link in the post heading. Well, mostly...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The chances are minute.
"Other scientists think there is no danger because we have been exposed to nanoparticles for thousands of years, such as ashes from volcanic eruptions. " /sarcasm on/ /sarcasm off/
And humans haven't had ANY as of yet unexplained health problems over those thousands of years either.
I think it was a bloody shame that the EPA declared New York's air safe to breath after the attack on the World Trade Center, when trillions of nano-toxins were released into the air for cleanup and emergency crews to inhale. We're going to see more of New York Lung, in the years to come.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Plasticisers, stabilizing agents, enzymes, catalysts and all these wonderful pharmecuticals that we consume and then pee into the environment are also nanomachines, just ones built with bulk chemistry rather than direct nanoscale assembly.
:v)
Didn't we ought to focus on what they do in the environment, rather than propagate scare stories about future nanomachines that can be pre-programmed to safely degrade?
Vik
Keith Curtis IS!
Don't ever fight me.
Prepare for the Keith World Order
I'm just concerned it's going to become a classic cliche on Slashdot to grouse about Roland P. story submissions.
We demand MORE asbestos! MORE asbestos!
End transmission.
better nanotoxicity than the regular kind.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
Roland P. grouses about YOU!!!
I'm not sure if asbestos is an appropriate analog for nano-based respiratory hazards. When Dr. Irving J. Seilkoff published his report on the link between asbestos and respiratory ailments, there was already an abundant record of impairment in the form of asbestosis. Asbestosis is a scarring and sedimentation of the lung due to particulate inhalation. It is in a general family of respiratory ailments known as pneumoconiosis. That group includes silicosis (affects quarry workers) and black lung (coal miners). The link that Seilkoff is credited with is the connection of asbestos to lung cancer, which is has only one known asbestiform species in direct connection: crocidolite. This blue amphibole was used in ship construction and in homes in and around Australia (sorry mates!). This asbestiform mineral has been directly connected to one of the most virulent forms of lung cancer, mesothelioma. This cancer of the plural lining is fatal within months of diagnosis.
Connections between other asbestiform minerals and cancer is more complex. Tremolite and serpentenite have also been linked to lung cancer, but the connection is much more tenuous. Another factor that would complicate the study of asbestos as an analog is the size: an asbestos fiber is counted for toxicological purposes only when it fits a 5:1 aspect ratio and is >5 micron in length. That is the geometry that is most likely to fit into the alveoli. This deep penetration of asbestos into the tissues of the lung is presumed to be the mechanism that leads to cancer. Plaques form around the embedded spines of asbestos as microphages attack and envelope the fibers. This process leads to a general lessening of the effective surface area for gas transfer leading to shortness of breath. The mechanics leading to cancer, however, are dubious and have plagued researchers for more than two decades.
I can't see how the study of asbestos can illuminate any area of occupational health. I can, however, see how injury claims attorneys would use the experience of asbestos litigation in any future attack on the nano-industry.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Yeah, because coal miners certainly never have health problems. And there's certainly no build-up in the lungs from smoking, either.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The real question comes in why asbestos causes harm. Is the the morphology (shape) of it that is the key? Or is it the chemical properties? Or is it both?
I must plead my ignorance when I say I don't know if that question has been fully answered yet. I do know that from certain Taconite mining operations they have found non-asbestos minerals that have a similar shape to asbestos, and have found higher rates of rare cancers, of the kind known that asbestos can cause, in the region around the mines. That might suggest the shape itself is important. You can find an example in this article.
Yes? I mean No. I mean... erm..
I don't know. It's too hard. Can I phone a friend?
Nay, those are the very Sacred Properties of His Noodly Appendage. Carbon Nanotubes are merely the newest Tower Of Babel - a feeble attempt to use puny "science" to achieve Sublime Pastaness.
Carbon... pah! It's carbohydrates that are pure and holy!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
*announcer voice*
"Have you been exposed to Nanotoxic material? Call Schmoe, Moe and Larry now for a quick settlement!"
Anything and everything may cause adverse problems in any given person. Take lactose intolerance. Just because one thing is determined to be harmful to most people doesn't mean it's harmful to all. How many people were exposed to Asbestos? How many people have mesothelioma, not all of them I will guarentee you that.
Does that mean those people got lucky or that they aren't susceptible to the disease. You make the call.
Just your everyday corporate code monkey.
STFU you stupid nanomaterials, I like smoking.
hi mom!
If I recall coreectly, people working on the space elevator (Lawrence Livermore Labs) were creating long strings of bucky balls (carbon nanotubes) as it is a very strong, very light material. The problem that they discovered (this was a few years ago) was that if you put 0.5 parts per billion of buckyballs into a fish tank (500 gallon aquarium), within 3 days, 20% of the fish start exhibiting signs of mental retardation. Within 5 days, the number soars to 80%, accompanied by 10% of the most severely affected fish dying. Within one week, all of the fish are either showing signs of extreme mental retardation, or have died. The part that they found most troubling was that if predatory fish ate those dead or dying fish, then they too would experience the same symptoms, and die in exactly the same way and in the same length of time. Preliminary disections showed that the carbon nanotubes could get past the membrane that surrounds the brain. Once they got in, they tended to cause severe damage to the brain. At least one report is here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4825
I'm not a biochemist (INABC - LOL), but I think there are common sense assumptions which should serve to structure a discussion on this. In the end there will have to be lab testing, as much as we all hate it.
nanotubes which are now used for many industrial developments, have similar shapes as fibers like asbestos, being long and extremely thin.
although similar structures can mean similar results doesnt mean itll always be that way. although this is a bad example, it gets the point across. Sodium, poison the human; Chlorine, poison to the human; NaCl, eccential to the human.
also "being long and extremely thin" is not something a chemist would exactly say is a good reason for similar structure. hell, gasoline or diesel is a carbon chain if i remember correctly, sounds long and thin, not exactly TOO harmful (controversy, but it's no asbestos).
Are nanotubes and like materials dangerous?
Yes.
So... don't go around breathing in nanotubes. I hope we've learned from our past health failings enough to use these materials responsibly. Who am I kidding though?
People are not going to understand that the cancer probe or glucose sensor made of nanotubes is actually safe, while the nanotube sweaters may be a bad idea.
Last time I read it, it was around $37. /. community of asbestos problems.
I'm not an AdWords/AdSense member, so I didn't have to agree to the TOS saying I can't discuss the money.
Something worth $37/click linked to by Mr. Roland. I can't help but suspect something deeper than an interest in informing the
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
people often ignore there are many types of asbestos, and only a when used incorrectly, or without the proper precautions is it truely harmful.
I'd like to know what form of asbestos they are talking about.
Blue Asbestos (crocidolite) == bad (no longer used) White Asbestos (chrysotile) != bad (used until the 1980s when enviromental wackos tried to ban in one of their many over generalized 'missions')
is that (at least with buckyballs and nanotubes) they're non-biodegradable (in this they're similar to asbestos). I recall watching the photo of a macrophage destroyed because it tried to swallow an asbestos particle.
The questions to be asked are:
Can the nanoparticles destroy the human cells, or alter their DNA as a side effect?
Can they clutter in the bloodstream or inside the organs?
Only one kind of asbestos particles are truely bad for lungs. When heat and pressure are applied to asbestos, small fibers come off with hooked ends. Its those hooks that are the real problem with asbestos. When you inhale them, they are like millions of tiny fish hooks that grab on to your lungs preventing you from coughing them out. Carbon nanotubes have exactly the opposite problem from a materials viewpoint, they are slippery little buggers so you can't bind them together. At least with nanotubes, comparing them to asbestos would be rediculous.
While I am sure there are risks to nano technology, I think the real force driving all this "concern" is plan and simple greed.
Nano technology is what's called a "disruptive" technology. That means that it will enable people to do things for pennies on the dollar that used to cost billions. Because of this it threatens what is called "barriers to entry" for many large corporations. According to business 101, the most profitable businesses have high barriers to entry that help keep competitors out and lock profits in.
The only problem is that when a company can't compete off of it's "natural" barriers to entry, then it's only option is to compete off of "regulatory" barriers to entry. Hence the strong incentives and financial pressure to make sure nano technology is a super overregulated industry before it even exits the starting gate.
So now all the other "concerns" about nano technology that keep poping up should be far more clear.
I come from small-town Montana (Thompson Falls, population 1300). Our Junior High school was, for many years, very full of asbestos insulation. The ceilings were usually in bad repair, so I expect that the citizens of our fine city were almost universally exposed to asbestos. However, I cannot recall any non-smoker in the city dying of lung cancer. Nanotoxicity is unlikely to happen except for manufacturers and other people exposed to large quantities: you and I are simply unlikely to be exposed to enough to harm us measurably. I am not denying the existance of black lung, asbestosis, or any other respiratory ailment, but it is important to remember that these usually afflict people constantly exposed to large amounts of the substance in question. A few carbon nanotubes working their way out of the internal structure of my thousand-story office building and into my lungs seems to me to be a worthwhile price for having that office building.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Boihazard? You mean, like the Backstreet Boys? Then this really isn't news at all, we've long known that that was hazardous to one's sanity ;-) Biohazards, too, for that matter.
Its doubtful that your body would even recognize these particles enough to filter them out. Even if they did it might be too late.
Most of the time, the body filters out chemicals by converting them to easier-to-handle chemicals. When these resist change (much like plastics, dioxins, etc, there's room for accumulation. When things accumulate in the body, bad things happen. Look at prions.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
There is a huge difference in scale. A biologically dangerous asbestos fibre is 3,000-10,000 nanometres in diameter. It is not a nanoscale object, and is significantly larger than a cell.
:v)
A buckytube is generally only a few nanometres in diameter, and relatively unreactive.
If you want examples of dangerous carbon-based particles, you need look no further than the unfiltered particulates emitted from all diesel exhausts. There's scant concern about those - diesel engines continue to operate unabated worldwide. Use of the apropriate nanotechnologies would eliminate this dangerous source of pollutants.
Vik
Volcanic ash is generally extremely toxic. It contains a wide variety of interesting substances such as sulphur and flourine which tend to do bad things to human and animal internals when they mix with water. In addition the nanoparticles are sharp and linked to longer term lung disease.
If nanotech substances are like volcanic ash I'd be about as worried as if they were like asbestos personally.
I'm a Canadian Architect who works in states. Some fun facts for everyone:
. htm
-Asbestos is still used in developing countries as a fire-protective material in building construction. Nothing still comes close to performanse vs. expense qualities of asbestos.
-Some of the most dangerous work/procedure in building retrofit/renovation is asbestos control/removal.
-Yet still, Canada (Quebec) is the number one manufacturer of asbestos in the world, for construction purposes. Asbestos is not used in it's pure form (in developed countries) anymore, but as a mixture component instead. US still remains a large manufacturer.
Very quick google search:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/air/permitting/asbmanu
t's legal to use manufacture asbestos products in Florida. Look at the list o products in that list, and then be scared. terrorists and hurricanes? who needs 'em? We can hurt ourselves with such higher sophistication.
Nanotoxicity? If you ask me, anyone stupid enough to eat their iPod deserves what they get.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
O2 comes to mind, it's such a small molecule it even permeates the lung tissues and dissolves into the blood ferchrissake!
So does CO! The problem is with nanoparticles, is it's difficult to understand enough to comprehend how either their physical or chemical nature will impact at the microscopic level, we then have to try to figure out how that will manifest itself at the macroscopic level.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
That study is somewhat old hat. Have a look here and you'll see that the mechanism is now understood.
:v)
In short, you can make toxic, or non-toxic buckyballs. The more bits you dangle on the outside of the buckyballs, the less toxic they become. Nanomachine designers will be aware of this and act accordingly.
Vik
Hmm, there must've been a mistake. A copy and paste error, perhaps? Anyway, here's the link everyone's really looking for.
It's okay.. I have excellent karma.. I can handle it.. *aaarggh*
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
We all know (now, if not before reading the summary) that carbon nanotubes and asbestos particles have similar shapes. How do their dimensions compare? Methinks this would be particularly relevant to their biochemical properties, and might make any similarities meaningless.
Urrr....yeah. Nothing to boost my confidence like comparisons to that pantheon of healthfulness and human safety, asbestos.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
YES! And there they will create little robots that will start controling our brains!
I live in NYC, and I don't trust the EPA to tell me that nanoparticles are safe. They lied to us after 9/11/2001 about the poisonous air. They lied to the heroic volunteers and police/fire/EMTs who could have worn masks while digging in the rubble. Instead thousands of people are walking testimonials to the EPA's lies about air pollution. I see them every day. The EPA's got a lot of work to recover its credibility. And I haven't seen anything to convince me that they're on that path.
--
make install -not war
Too much coal dust will kill you. Too much radiation will kill you. Too much Vitamin A will kill you. Too much tylenol will kill you. A large bale of marijuana will kill you, if dropped from sufficient height. And varying amounts of above substances can make you sick. We need to know safe acceptable limits whenever the population en masse will be exposed to new substances. Lots of tricky details to sort out, and no simple answers.
Be heard || Be herd
Nice link, AC.
... in the last two years I have been Slashdotted between two and eight times per month (!!!), and yes, I do acknowledge that this is a good thing... "
Roland got a job blogging for ZDnet. His blog entry today shares its first paragraph with the slashdot post. Since I didn't find any links from this post to his blogs (using a couple of whois(1) and other queries) he might just be a slashdot fan now.
quote from parent's link:
"RG: Well, I was asking this (and I haven't been having any secret about this with you in the past), because I saw you were getting lots and lots of traffic from Slashdot, on a repetitive almost systematic basis.... I don't whether [sic] this played a significant role in getting you to ZDNet but it certainly provided you with lots of prominence and exposure....
Roland Piquepaille:
nano stuff
and there's lots more in daily use
makes this whole nano=bad thing a bit silly
when the reality is new nano = unknown
maybe it's more like unknown = bad for way too many TV teat suckers
The dangers of asbestos were actualy knowns since as early as 1898, when Lucy Dean, one of the first women inspectors for factories in the UK wrote about asbestos work as one of the top four dusty occupations which came under observation that year 'on account of their easily demonstrated danger to the health of workers and because of ascertained cases of injury of brinchial tubes and lungs'.
o rt_2001_22/en/issue-22-part-05.pdf for more informations about asbestos and the problems it's use created.
Similar observations followed in the years 1909 and 1910 and were widly circulated amongst policy-makers and politicans. By 1918 insurance companies in Canada and the United States declined insurance cover for asbestos workers 'due to the assumed injourious conditions in the industry'.
I repeat; the danger of asbestos was known from the very beginning and shorty thereafter insurance companies decliend to cover asbestos damage. That was in the 1920s. Asbestos was however used into the 1980 as a cheap and fire resistant material.
I think we should learn from the mistakes in the past and try not to repeat them.
Read this http://reports.eea.eu.int/environmental_issue_rep
The border between blood and brain can be crossed by only very few substances. This border is the reason why so many drugs have to be take in very high doses if these drugs have to affect the brain.
Nanoparticles, however, just jump over this border as if it were nonexistant. And don't forget that there is no known way to filter nanoparticles, eg, in air. You may be able to filter nanoparticles in a very small volume, but that's it. You cannot build an gasmask with the ability to filter out nanoparticles.
I've often wondered whether all those millions of fibreglass insulation blankets that have been installed in house ceilings will begin to cause similar problems to asbestos when they begin to break down.
Nanotubes disintegrate in water. (Humans are bags of mostly water.) So you'll have to look elsewhere for your asbetos-like lung-daggers.
Asbestos is a naturally occuring mineral. ... for instance ... my dogs toot ;)
Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it won't try to kill you.
Take
geomon:
You seem up on the research.
I had heard (nasty untracable rumor) that the connection between asbestos and cancer had been detected in smokers and/or without controlling for amount of tobacco smoke exposure.
Given that tobacco smoke has a plethora of known carcinogens and that an asbestos puncture both breaches barriers between the air (with its high concentration of smoke in smokers) and the live cells (or even their innards) and causes inflamation (which leads to massively increased sensitivity to carcinogens by several mechanisms), that might suggest that much - even most - of the cancer connection might be from this potentiation of tobacco carcenogenicity, and a study that controlled for tobacco use might give a better read on asbestos hazards.
Do you happen to know if such studies have been done?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You mean ionized sodium, not the neutral stuff. A world of difference, chemically speaking.
here are some studies that show there isnt a link between mesothelioma and smoking.
d .section.21842
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=cme
"Although asbestos exposure and cigarette smoking act synergistically to produce bronchogenic carcinoma, smoking is not a factor for mesothelioma.183,192,238,291"
Without some analytic tools we will only be able to say toxicity is somewhere on the scale between candle soot and ebola.
The Lawrence Livermore Labs story I had not heard before. In fact probably a lot of young people in universities especially overseas have not, and also may not know about the way to dial down toxicity on buckyballs.
The scariness and persistence of the "strings of buckyballs toxicity" issue is massive, and it seems possible that when nanofibers break or are subject to varied chemical environmetns they could become more toxic.
For the moment I'd stay away from nano anything that has not been fused in an oven or been washed in some organic solution, and don't eat the brains, nerves or gonads (ick!) of anything. The human body has a cool immune system but it really isn't high security when you talk about manmade particles especially active things, so while we can stay safer for a while by basing anything we ingest on biological cell based technologies, you could certainly imagine having to install different kinds of filters in the bloodstream to ward off the results of mediocre nanotech labs and bioterrorists. Or did you think that only responsible people can make this stuff?
We never thought you'd stoop this low.
Anyone with any experience in adsense knows a thing or two about 'abestos'.....
man..
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Try this: James Hardie did a runner from Australia trying to avoid a hefty payout for Asbestos related illnesses
You never catch me alive
I recall reading a book by an authoritative writer (who also happens to be a doctor, so he must be right) about these nanoparticles. Apparently, they can evolve some form of complex behaviour, fly around in swarms and prey on human beings, turning them into food or subservient zombies! Ah, by the way, global warming is just a huge scam by politicized scientists who want to gain power and raise funds.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Cancer risks of all types of asbestos
When the article mentions "cooking" it means Teflon without naming the product, right?
You seem to be looking carefully into the problem in your area - presumably CA? It is a nuisance that so much of the bedrock, soil and water sources in CA seem to contain various types and amounts of asbestos. You probably already know there are a number of different detection methods. Do you know whether the asbestos testing lab you employed used transmission electron microscopy or optical microscopy? The latter is cheap but rather unreliable. The former is one of the best methods if you can afford it. As an alternative to using commercial testing labs, you might consider asking a local university chemistry department to do the preliminary work on fiber detection for you -- their expertise is likely to be very high, yet university labour rates are still usually much cheaper than those of testing labs.
Diesel nanoparticles?? You mean as in common contaminants, or the longchain carbon molecules themselves? And what about fuel-oil home heating furnaces that use #2 diesel??
Whilst reading here, it did occur to me to wonder about "microfibre" fabrics that are now becoming more common (especially since the price has evidently now dropped to about the same as regular fabrics) -- do they pose broken-fibre inhalation hazards that ordinary fabrics don't?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
While the comparison has some merit, more research needs to be done before drawing any conclusion.
Why, whenever rich industries are involved, do we take the obviously backwards stance that "Until you prove its harmless, lets assume its probably not."
How about, keep that shit out of my stainguard pants until you show me *why* its safe.
Why stick up for big business?
Ummm, didn't 99% of the people in Pompeii die from suffocating on the tiny ash particles long before the lava ever got there?
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model