In my last post I talked about the need for regulatory bodies to start addressing health & safety concerns regarding the use of nanotechnologies in different products and industries. It is a good sign then, that to qualm questions about…]]>In my last post I talked about the need for regulatory bodies to start addressing health & safety concerns regarding the use of nanotechnologies in different products and industries. It is a good sign then, that to qualm questions about the safety and environmental impact of nanoparticles, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has now published a new international standard to support inhalation toxicity testing of nanoparticles. Entitled “Nanotechnologies—characterization of nanoparticles in inhalation exposure chambers for inhalation toxicity testing,” ISO 10808:2010 establishes standards to ensure that toxicity tests for nanoparticles are reliable and consistent worldwide.
The new guidelines published will help key industry players assess the possible risks presented by the continuing growth of nano-based products and nanotechnologies in the food, cosmetics, IT and medical sectors which has led to increasing concern from researchers, manufacturers, regulators and consumers over their potential impact on the environment and on workers exposed to them.
Potential Gains vs Potential Risks
While huge potential gains are driving burgeoning investment, the technology itself s relatively new and scientists still have much to learn about nanoparticles. The ISO said its new standard is designed to further that understanding and in particular to help support inhalation toxicity testing of nanoparticles.
“With the rapid expansion of nanotechnology applications comes a growing risk of exposure to potentially toxic substances, especially for workers in nanotechnology-based industries,” said Dr Peter Hatto, chair of the standard committee. “Moreover, if airborne nanoparticles were liberated from products, the general public could also be affected. Ensuring the safety of these particles is therefore paramount for the well-being of workers and consumers.”
The new standard, ISO 10808:2010, Nanotechnologies – Characterization of nanoparticles in inhalation exposure chambers for inhalation toxicity testing – helps ensure that the results of analysis used to establish inhalation toxicity of airborne nanoparticles are reliable and harmonized worldwide.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published draft guidance giving more specific risk assessment information regarding the use of nanotechnology in food.
In the newly published guidance document, EFSA advocates the use of classical risk assessment practices in this emerging area of food science. This means hazard identification and hazard characterisation followed by exposure assessment and risk characterisation.
One such collaboration between government and industry is the promotion of a Centre of Excellence in Nanosafety. This Centre for Excellence in Nanosafety would act together with government and industry to provide characterization, toxicokinetics and genotoxic profiles of nanoparticles. But it should also offer standards that could serve to needs in different related industries i.e, nanofood, nanomedicine, nanoenergy and nanomanufacturing, if the centre is to be effective at all at addressing the fears of investors and consumers alike.
Lack of skilled and trained workforce in nanotechnology and nanosciences will be a problem in the coming decades, both in the EU and US. The importance of training future workforces for nano-industry has been emphasized many times over. We have…]]>
In the classical approach to education, students are taught a sequential vertical progression from basic to specialized courses in a particular discipline (i.e. Physics, Engineering), or after basic course they are exposed to an interdisciplinary course (i.e. a Master’s degree in Nanoscience). With the multidisciplinary nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology, a new approach has to be devised, and many institutions are opting for a way of introducing the students to the essence and interdisciplinarity of nanoscience from the very first day. In this way freshmen are taught the unifying concepts of matter and biological systems, giving them the opportunity to apply these from one field to another. Real interdisciplinarity can be achieved combining the breadth of nanoscience with the depth of each discipline involved. 
One group in Spain, lead by Dr García-Hernández’s team, found buckyballs around three planetary nebulae, in our own Milky Way galaxy. These objects, made up of material shed from stars at the end of their life cycle, are similar to the one where Spitzer found the first evidence for their existence. However, one interesting detail coming out from this research is that all the planetary nebulae in which buckyballs have been detected are rich in hydrogen. As material scientists out there know, buckyballs are produced in the lab in the total absence of hydrogen which tends to contaminate the mixtures, producing hydrocarbon chains and other non spherical structures. The fact that Dr García-Hernández’s team findings suggest that in space these two molecules can coexist without impairing the formation of buckyballs goes against what researchers thought for decades.
The team in Spain also located buckyballs in a planetary nebula within the 
hen we talk about the uses of nanotechnology in medical applications, we can be confident in stating that nanoparticles offer more physical scope for functional engineering than, say, other molecules (I am thinking of either naturally occurring ones and artificially…]]>
But this is not all nanoparticles can deliver, they can play the role of small interfering RNA, siRNA, delivery vehicles into targeted cells. Once the siRNA load has been delivered into the cell, it accomplishes the objective by modulating protein expression. siRNA therapy promise to provide unprecedented and specific control of cellular processes making current pharmacological arsenal look like medieval leech therapy in comparison. RNA molecules have short half-lives in circulation and don’t readily enter cells, but engineering nanoparticles to overcome this barrier will enable siRNA therapy to revolutionize the way we fight against diseases like cancer.
Most importantly, perhaps, is graphene’s potential as a replacement for silicon in computer chips. The properties of graphene would enable the historical growth in computing power to continue for decades to come. But as always, we need to overcome the hurdle of mass production at a reasonable if not profitable cost. And so far we are not there yet. Several new methods are already under investigation and some promise can be seen in the use of vertical CVD techniques. 
Graphene then has been picking up so much ‘hype’ that the recent suggestion by A. D. Alhaidari from the Saudi Center for Theoretical Physics in Jeddah that mass can be created inside carbon nanotubes should not produce too much of a head scratching. However the idea that graphene can act as a laboratory for studying exotic relativistic physics is one of the most exciting new ideas in solid state physics. It turns out that the electronic properties of graphene can be tuned so that the movement of electrons and holes through the structure at speeds of 10^6 m/s is mathematically equivalent to the behaviour of electrons travelling in a vacuum close to the speed of light.
