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Graphene Could Be Dangerous To Humans and the Environment
Zothecula (1870348) writes "It's easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material. Two recent studies, however, give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene's potential toxicity in human cells. Another study by a team from University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering examined how graphene oxide nanoparticles might interact with the environment if they found their way into surface or ground water sources."
Is it more toxic than the widely-used dihydrogen monoxide?
That's two words!
Ever since I first heard about the idea of grey goo, I've always wondered why no-one realises that grey goo already exists: they're called bacteria and viruses. They reproduce unchecked, can have catastrophic consequences for all other forms of life, and are largely carbon-based nano-machines.
The idea of self-replicating small entities is the same, but that bacteria is micrometer scale not nanoscale aside, the difference is the scenario where gray goo consume everything. Virus replicate only within living cells, and most of them in a non-deadly (even if somewhat harmful) symbiosis with the host. Grey goo nano-machines consume raw materials, not only us, but all the stuff around us (including what we try to contain them with).
A wonder material that turns out to be extremely dangerous?
You don't say? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
The biological properties of lead were very well known.
Didn't keep people from adding it to fuel and blowing it out of the tail pipes of virtually every car for a couple of decades.
This time it's nano materials.
The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
It is hardly surprising that graphene can, in some circumstances, be dangerous. Exhaust particulates, which he have known for years are dangerous, contain (now we know what we are looking for) large numbers of graphene nanoparticles, which may well contribute to their damaging effects. Just about every chemical ever tested has bad effects at some scale. What I didn't get from either article was any sense of the scale of the danger. Obviously, it is early days in the research, and one would only expect an order of magnitude estimate. But is is such a danger that we should not allow graphene products into the home lest they spill, or merely one which demands normal safety precautions in the factories for future graphene products? A warning of danger without some idea of the scale of the problem is just sensationalist: it induces fear without giving any idea as to what should be done, if anything,
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Dihydrogen monoxide, hydrogen hydroxide, hydroxylic acid, etc. are all humorous names for the abundant compound oxidane. In solid phase it's also called ice, in liquid phase it's water, and in gas phase it's steam. It doesn't have the same sort of allotropic variation as elemental carbon.