This paper caught my eye or rather the report in Chemistry World did (both are open access). It is a study conducted by Ferguson etal discussing the fate of single walled nanotubes in the environment. Now I am the first to admit that I don’t know much about this, I am aware of the advances in the synthesis of these things, but their uses well they are a bit vague at this end.
However, there is concern amongst the community that such entities may actually be harmful to the environment and to the populous at large. It reminds me of that Michael Crichton Novel, Prey where nano machines gain artificial intelligence and proceed to run amuck. However, we are not quite at that stage (yet). This Ferguson study examined the fate of these compounds on an aquatic system, quote” Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are one of the most important classes of engineered nanomaterials. While production and usage is steadily increasing, our current knowledge on their environmental fate and toxicity is still very limited. In order to properly assess the risk SWNTs might posses after an unintentional release into the environment, long-term behavior and distribution between different compartments must be evaluated in a relastic complex natural system. This is the first study evaluating the short and long-term behavior of SWNTs in a wetland ecosystem. We tracked the SWNT con-centration in different environmental compartments over time after a pulse addition event into a outdoor wet-land mesocosm simulating a spill into the aquatic environment. More than 99% of the dosed SWNTs were quickly removed from the water compartment where they were dosed. The major portion resided at the sediment surface. Little evidence was found to indicate uptake into mosquitofish and biota, respectively. The study shows that SWNTs are very persistent in natural systems and sediments act as major sinks for SWNTs. The distribution of SWNTs in the environment is mainly governed by their partioning towards sediments limiting its mobility and controlling its bioavailability. Implications of this study are important mainly for near source emis-sions, spill situations and ecotoxicity tests.”
I find this a bit worrying that they are not somehow broken down but just sit there. At least there was no uptake into the marine life. But who knows? There are lots of these things used these days, which ones will turn out to be toxic? Let’s hope none of them. Perhaps some caution is needed here with proper evaluation of their effects on our delicately balanced ecosystem(s).
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A friend who was working with these nanotubes said once that they may be carcinogenic, maybe because of the small particle size? I don’t have any data to support this, but as a fine dust I can imagine them being harmful, and whatever ends up in sediment will one day turn into dust… It may end up like many other technologies before (eg. long perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids): by the time they become established in some technologies, the environemental regulators will be on their backs.
Thanks for the comment. Yes I can imagine that the would be carcinogenic. I think of asbestos dust or any fine dust that can get into the lung. Perhaps such things may clump together in the bloodstream. They may even be transported across the blood brain barrier. In any case I think we need to be very careful with these things.
It’s probably too late, as you said, they are most likely in the environment already.