Category: Nanotechnology

Once again we’re at a pivotal point in human development, where a novel technology might allow us to improve the lot of millions, perhaps billions of people across the globe and yet activists are invoking the precautionary principle and informing consumers of the possible dangers therein. As happened with vaccines, nuclear energy, genetically modified crops, stem cells and cloning, and the whole of the chemical and pharmaceuticals industry, they talk of known unknowns, unknown knowns, unknown unknowns and the need to avoid any risk at any price.

The latest scare-mongering is in a similar vein and comes just as the Northern summer reaches its sunniest peak. Apparently some sunscreen manufacturers are already going “nano free” because of activist pressure despite the fact that there is scant evidence that any of the so-called nanoscopic ingredients in modern sunscreens cause any harm whatsoever, while they’re protecting you from harmful sun exposure. It’s odd isn’t it? The marketers and sunscreen and cosmetics manufacturers jumped on the nano bandwagon a decade ago claiming all kinds of miraculous effects for their supposedly new ingredients, and yet today, they’re shying away from them.

In a recent paper in the International Journal of Biomedical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2010, 1, 1, 87-94), a lawyer at Australian National University, in Canberra, discusses the issues surrounding nanoparticles and aggregated nanoparticles in sunscreen.

“Currently, no health technology regulator internationally specifies distinct safety regulations or requirements that must be met by manufacturers using ENPs [engineered nanoparticles] in sunscreens or other health products,” he says. However, earlier in his paper Thomas Faunce points out that there are no published research results to suggest adverse effects partly because nanoparticles in sunscreen preparations , specifically zinc oxide and and titanium dioxide while forming free radicals in sunlight undergo “minimal dermal absorption… below the dead and highly keratinised cells of the stratum corneum.”

Am I missing something here? The paper first says that there is no obvious mechanism to suggest any risk other than free radical formation (which is after all caused by the UV absorption) and then suggests we must invoke the precautionary principle just in case. But, why?

Faunce adds that, “No government has yet established regulation to allow the public to make informed choices through proper labelling”. But, I’d like to know what he means by proper labelling. A proper label would perhaps say something like

WARNING This product contains nanoparticles that will protect you from sunlight by absorbing the energy of UV radiation, will only be absorbed by the upper layer of dead skin cells and so should be perfectly safe

Faunce talks of a “significant breakthrough for campaigners against the unregulated use of nanoparticulate sunscreens”, but one has to wonder why anyone should care about campaigners who are basing their concerns on non-facts. So what if apparently iconic sunscreen brands are now touting the fact that they’re nano-free, they know how to follow the market. But, it now means that consumers are left with old school sunscreens. I remember writing for Chemistry and Industry magazine back in the 1990s about evidence that certain conventional sunscreen formulations carried with them a cancer risk because their ingredients were indeed absorbed into deeper layers of the skin, unlike the nanoparticulate formulations.

Faunce refers to the three-quarters of 68 sunscreen brands surveyed as refusing to disclose whether or not their formulations contain nanomaterials and others admitting as if they’re somehow on trial.

I asked nanotechnology expert Andrew Maynard Director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan, to comment on this odd scenario regarding the safety of nano-sunscreens. He points out that Faunce’s article seems to be predominantly focused on the labelling issue and the consumer’s right to know. “This is tricky, as even though the evidence indicates nanomaterials in sunscreens is pretty much a non-issue, there is still a question mark over how consumers and regulators actually know what the active ingredient is,” he told Sciencebase. However, he emphasises that the current state of science strongly indicates that healthy skin is a good barrier against nanoparticle penetration.

Maynard would argue that accurate ingredient identification is important, irrespective of whether the scientific consensus indicates there is a health issue or not. “In the case of nanoparticles in sunscreens, the evidence is strong that there is not a health issue,” he adds. ” Although, as always, there is a little wriggle room for doubt as the research isn’t 100% conclusive – once more a case of more research to dot the i’s and cross the T’s than taking action!” he adds.

Anyway, who said size doesn’t matter? Professor Tilman Butz, who has researched nanoparticle penetration through the skin and is the project leader of the (now complete ) EU Nanoderm Project, posted on Maynard’s blog suggesting that nanoparticles currently used are simply a non-starter when it comes to health issues with sunscreen:

In use are titanium dioxide and sometimes zinc oxide with primary particle sizes around 20 nm. They have a weight in the order of 1 MDa (1 million Daltons = weight of 1 million hydrogen atoms, expressed in molecular terminology although the particles are not molecules). There is general agreement that 0,5 kDa is the upper limit for dermal penetration. Hence, these particles are much too large (heavy) for dermal penetration.

In a climate where cancer organisations are forever trying to convince to avoid sun exposure (that’s another story: skin cancer and sun exposures ), one really has to wonder at the sense of activists trying to get active and useful materials removed from products that are purely a lifestyle choice in the first place. It’s not as if the manufacturers are forcing toxic sunscreen down our throats as they did with melamine contaminant in China not so long ago.

As far as I can tell, nano-sunscreens are more protective and companies who laid their towel on the best loungers by the pool earliest are now back pedalling purely for marketing purposes not because of the precautionary principle or any shift in safety knowledge.

Thomas Faunce (2010). Exploring the safety of nanoparticles in Australian sunscreens Int. J. Biomed. Nanosci. Nanotechnol., 1 (1), 87-94

Science news links for June 3rd through June 8th, including my latest contributions to Materials Today magazine:

• Nanotechnology fights cancer – Functionalised single-walled carbon nanotubes, rather than being a health risk, cause T cell antigens to cluster in the blood and stimulate the body's natural immune response.
• Flat-packed carbon – Synthesising and isolating new forms of pure carbon allotropes, has been the focus of much research during the last two to three decades not least because of the discovery of the fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and more recently graphene. It is the possibility of synthesizing thin films akin to graphene, but with novel connectivity that piqued the interest of researchers in China who have now produced a novel allotrope called graphdiyne.
• Dipping into nanotechnology – An ability to answer questions at the boundaries of nanotechnology, materials and biology sets apart Steven Lenhert, the newest faculty face of nanoscience at The Florida State University. His research melds metals and semiconductors with biological materials and could lead to a range of new products in medicine and manufacturing for tissue engineering, drug discovery, and computer chip fabrication.
• Lie detection: Part 2 – Brain scans and lie detectors
• The Evolution of Computer Science – Computing the energy levels of a helium atom in 1958 was significantly harder than it is today. But a comparison of then and now methods reveals some counterintuitive anomalies about the impact of computer science.
• Magnetic stent therapy – Magnetic nanoparticles carrying a pharmaceutical payload can be pulled towards blood vessel blockages to help clear them, according to research published earlier this year.
• Waterfall iPhone app – Like Tetris but with water molecules and ice crystals. The ice caps are melting, you have to rebuild them one water molecule at a time!

Pregnant pause for thought – The analytical cousin of magnetic resonance imaging, NMR spectroscopy, has revealed that a chemical compound found in unpasteurised food can be present at unusually high levels in the red blood cells of pregnant women. The compound, the antioxidant ergothioneine, could be used as a biomarker for the potentially fatal condition, pre-eclampsia, which can cause severely raised blood pressure during pregnancy, according to the researchers, although they explain that the compound is probably not the cause of the disorder.

NIR improvements near – Spectroscopy, forensic science and even a future generation of quantum communication devices could benefit from research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). There, researchers have developed a new, highly sensitive, and low-cost approach to measuring electromagnetic radiation in the near-infrared range, just beyond visible red light in the spectrum.

Raman joins the dots – Sub-microscopic particles, nanoparticles, can be used to boost the signal in Raman spectroscopy enough to allow researchers to detect several biomarkers for disease simultaneously even deep within tissues of living animals. The discovery could help in disease diagnostics, biomedical research, and potentially cancer treatment.

The May issue of my Spotlight column over on the Intute site is now online, this month featuring:

Flush with nanoparticles – What happens to carbon-based nanoparticles when they enter groundwater? Can municipal water supplies filter them out? And, if they cannot will they cause health problems? These are crucial questions that need answers now, as nanotechnology grows. Now, a new study by Kurt Pennell, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and colleagues, suggests that subtle differences in the solution properties of the water carrying such particles can determine their ultimate fate.

Ocean oxygen starvation – Oxygen-poor regions of tropical oceans are expanding as the oceans warm, limiting the areas in which predatory fishes and other marine organisms can live or enter in search of food, according to a major ongoing marine exploratory project. The phenomenon could cut overall marine biodiversity.

The Collaborative Research Centre programme – Climate: Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean – funded by the German Research Foundation is working in close cooperation with the University of Kiel, and researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

Carbon balls to the dinosaurs – Palaeontologists presume that an asteroid impact led to such enormous and widespread environmental upheaval that it wiped out the dinosaurs and thousands of other species when it struck the Earth. Now, researchers from Italy, New Zealand, UK, and USA suggests that the impact force was so great that it would have liquefied carbon in the planet’s crust and sprayed tiny airborne carbon beads into the atmosphere in unimaginable quantities.

You can check out the Spotlight archives via the Sciencebase recent scientific discoveries page.

How does one measure the worth of the science base? From the scientists’ perspective it is their bread and butter, or low-fat spread and rye biscuit, perhaps, in some cases. From industry’s standpoint, it is occasionally a source of interesting and potentially money-spinning ideas. Sometimes, it sits in its ivory tower and, to the public, it is the root of all those media scare stories. At worst, the science base is perceived as a huge drain on taxpayers’ money, especially when the popular press gets hold of ‘spiders on cannabis’ and the ‘scum on your tea’ as the lead science stories for the year!

For the government though, which more often than not is providing the funds for basic research, the science base is crucial to all kinds of endeavours: wealth creation, the development of fundamental science into practical technology, the demolition of those ivory towers and the mixing of scientists with the great industrial unwashed through collaboration. As such, governments try to ensure that the science they fund is accountable – to government, to its sponsors and to society and the public as a whole.

But, I come back to my first question. How does one measure the impact of basic research on society? If one went begging for funding for a new area in chemistry with no practical applications anywhere in sight, funding would likely be meagre. It can be dressed up, of course, natural product chemistry almost always has the potential for novel medicinally active compounds while even the most esoteric supramolecular chemistry could be the nanotechnology breakthrough we have been waiting for. You’ve seen and maybe even written the applications yourself. On the other hand, take any piece of genetics with the potential to cure some likely disease and the cash will usually roll in, at least relatively speaking.

So, what does quality mean when applied to scientific research? Was the discovery of the fullerenes quality science? Well, yes it obviously was in that it stirred up the chemistry and other communities and generated mass appeal for a subject that gets rather less of an airing in a positive light than certain other sciences. Fullerenes also provided some of the scientists involved with a Nobel Prize so someone in Sweden must have liked it.

But, if we were to apply any kind of standard criteria of usefulness to society we would be hard pushed to give it the highest score except only as a demonstration that fundamental science can still excite. After all, have you seen any real applications yet? I touched on the potential for medicinal fullerenes early in the fullerene rising star and it is probably unfair to single them out for accountability, especially as ultimately they inspired the carbon nanotubes. You might say that they are simply one of many examples of science as art. They allow us to visualise the world in a new way, they are beautiful – chemically, mathematically, physically.

The pressure is now on scientists to face up to some imposing questions as government-mandated requirements begin to come into effect. [This has become a moot point in the UK since this article was first aired, given funding cuts for big, esoteric science projects]. Efforts to make science accountable come with a massive burden of controversy and are hindered by the almost impossible task of measuring creative activities such as research. Added to this, accountability requires increasing levels of administration especially at times of formal assessment for the scientists themselves.

The careers of most scientists hinge on these assessments, in more ways than one, as the pressure on faculty pushes them in directions they may not naturally go, producing research papers just to satisfy the assessment process, for instance. This coupled with a general drive to bring science to the public – through media initiatives – and so demonstrate to people why science is important and why their money should be spent on it – just adds to the pressure.

However, despite the marketing-style talk of stakeholders, and the close industrial analogues, the shareholders, basic scientific research is not about customers and churning out identical components on a production line. There are usually no targets and no truly viable and encompassing methods to assess the quality of any part of the scientific endeavour. Ironically, this means the end-of-year bonus is something on which most scientists miss out, regardless of their successes. Science is the art, technology makes it pay, but some art is fundamental or avant garde and some finds its way on to advertising hoardings. Which do you prefer, fine art or glossy brochure?

By forcing basic science to become accountable in terms of product and efficiency there is the possibility that creativity and autonomy will be stifled. If done right, accountability can strengthen the relationship between research and society.

Measuring the socioeconomic benefits from specific scientific investments is tough. Basic research gets embodied in society’s collective skills, putatively taking us many more directions than we would otherwise have headed. As such, it can have a future impact on society at entirely unpredictable points in time. Who knows where that pioneering fullerene chemistry will have taken us by the end of this century?

Sir Harry Kroto, co-discoverer of the fullerenes told me in an interview once that, “Scientists are undervalued by a society that does not understand how outstanding someone has to be to become a full-time researcher.” Maybe the measure of science is in its beauty rather than its assessment scores.

Nanopaprika could be the key ingredient for spicing up the nanoscience and nanotechnologies communities. Site editor Andras Paszternak asked me to join just before the scientific social networking site passed the hot point of 500 members. Whether or not that nice round figure really is key to online science remains to be seen but there is certainly a buzz about the place.

I had rather hoped to kick off a lively debate on nanogoo and the media hype and parallel scare stories that have emerged since K Eric Drexler’s first proclamations about nanobots following on from Feynman’s famous room at the bottom lecture.

We’ve all read the grey goo headlines but we’ve also seen the hype regarding what nano has to offer. I often tell people it’s nothing special, just stuff that happens to be a few billionths of a metre in scale. If it’s not grey goo and it’s not the Drexlerian promise of a decade since, then where is modern nanoscience and when will it truly beecome nanotechnology?

I also asked the same question, in time-honoured fashion, of my LinkedIn contacts and have summarised responses here.

Liam Sutton, a Business Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield’s Polymer Centre and Technical Consultant at FaraPack Polymers had this to say: “Well, ‘nanoscience’ is such a broad area. After all, the term encompasses (as far as I understand it) anything physical with a characteristic length scale in the order of nanometres. So there are unpleasant stories to tell, like the discovery of penetration of the blood-brain barrier in rats by diesel smoke particles and, equally, there are billion-dollar nanotechnologies already out there like hard disk drives based on the giant magnetoresistance of synthetic nanoparticles.”

Suttons adds that the Sheffield answer to this sort of question is to direct people towards the Soft Machines blog of Richard Jones, who is Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. “It’s a very well written and authoritative source on the place and direction of nanoscience and technology,” Sutton says.

Tim Harper, a (nano)Technologies Entrepreneur, says that, “Most of the hype seems to have shifted to Cleanteach (along with most of the hypers) so the picture is becoming a lot clearer. The technology is now emerging in a number of areas although the majority of ‘nano’ is still nanoscience.” He points readers to a couple of white papers dealing with this on the Cientifica website. Harper is VP Business Development at PlayGen, Contributing Editor at The Real Nanotech Investor, and an Editorial Board member on NANO, published by World Scientific.

Philippe Bradley (no relation), an Oxford Uni student and founder of CivSpark.com, which is currently in development said: “Nanobiotechnology seems to be a very exciting field at the moment – because, behind the opaque name, it’s basically the science of beating nature at its own game. The body is full of amazing machines, nanoscience seeks to modify or emulate them – or create completely new machines that perform similar functions.”

“Nanotechnology, as far as theory goes for technology in the nano domain, exists very much today,” adds Santanu Ganguly, at Network Engineer at Swisscom. He points to quantum dots, electron spin dynamics, atomic clusters etc, which all lie under the nanoscience banner. “In terms of actually seeing the basic science become a ‘true’ technology, certain challenges still remain,” he adds, “most of which has to do with quantum interactions. The most promising part so far, from the point of view of applications and control over quantum interactions, seems to be quantum optics and manipulation of DNA.”

You can read other responses and follow additional resources via the LinkedIn answers page. What are your thoughts on nano hype and nano fears? Are we set to drown in nanogoo at some point in the future or will nano save the world? Surely, with all this paprika around it’s time for a pep talk…

Related articles

• What is grey goo?
• No Nanoparticles Were Killed Making This Post
• Are nanobots on their way?

The research of Arpad Putzai about a decade ago in which he fed genetically modified potatoes to rats and purportedly observed deleterious effects, kicked off the whole anti-GM movement in the UK. In a recent Guardian interview with Pusztai, his current position on the subject is probably best summed up by an early quote from the interview:

“We’re eating things that we haven’t eaten before, and I challenge anyone to be able to predict what will be the consequences of this, particularly the consequences for our immune system.”

One might argue that today we are consuming thousands of things that were not available to ancestors from bananas and kiwi fruits to chocolate truffles and skinny café latte mochachino with marshmallows and sprinkles. Excess and overindulgence aside, our bodies seem to cope immunologically with a huge range of foodstuffs that are newly available in terms of the evolution of our enzymes.

Indeed, it was Bruce Ames, of Ames test for cancer causing fame, who pointed out that every day the DNA in every cell of our bodies is exposed to thousands of putatively harmful agents and those or mainly from the natural products of the natural environment. So, why should a few GM potatoes engineered to ward off insect larvae without the use of pesticides be any different?

While we may not be adapted to the specifics of GM crops our bodies do seem able to cope with novel foods. Moreover, we are still evolving (just look at the enzymes we have that cope with cow’s milk and alcoholic drinks that apparently occurred only once we became an agricultural species 10,000 years ago. The same argument might be applied to the advent of nanoscience. However, are the lessons science should have learned from the public relations debacle sparked by Pusztai’s revelations ahead of peer review being ignored again as the nanotechnology age dawns?

Nanoparticles and nanocomposites are essentially any substances that exist as collections of individual entities in the size range of 1 to 100 nanometres in diameter. So at least an order of a magnitude bigger than atoms and molecules. The biggest molecules, proteins, some supramolecular structures and the fullerenes all fall below this range, although they almost overlap with the smallest of genuine nanoparticles. Conversely, nothing bigger than a hundred nanometres, a couple of hundred at a push, can be described as nanoscopic, rather at the micrometre scale you are looking (with a microscope) at microscopic particles. So the fullerenes are not nanoparticles and neither are the kind of microscopic particles of asbestos that are known to cause serious health problems. Nanoparticles are in between these two extremes.

Nanotechnology is, of course, an entirely different simmering pan of aquatic chordates than GMOs. Although saying that we have co-existed with organisms that are genetically modified throughout evolution as well as particles that just happen to be in the size range 1 to 100 nm.

Nevertheless a whole field of nanotoxicology has emerged over the last three or four years and a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Nanotechnology (IJNT, 2008, vol 5(1), pp 1-160) will cover many of the issues as well as reporting on various recent studies into the safety or otherwise of nano materials. Among the themes are investigations into the putative effects of nanoparticles on the human lung, blood serum, and epithelial cells, as well as reports covering how to design safety into nanotechnology, and developing a risk management framework. There is certainly a need to monitor the emergence of nano, in terms of occupational, environmental and consumer risks.

Whereas Pusztai’s results published a decade ago triggered a public relations catastrophe from which UK genetic scientists have yet to recover, it doesn’t seem that nanoscience and nanotechnology are going down quite the same road in terms of media scare stories and public anxieties.

As with GM there is huge potential in this burgeoning field of discovery. “Nanomaterials offer tremendous societal benefit,” says cell biologist Thomas Weber of Pacific Northwestern Laboratory, guest Editor of the special issue of IJNT “from improving medicines to everyday items such as automobiles and aircraft or your favourite fishing rod.”

Unfortunately, the tabloids have latched on to the concept of a “grey goo” produced by myriad self-replicating nanobots of which K Eric Drexler warned in his nano-pioneering 1986 book The Engines of Creation, but that is probably an impossibility. Such nanobots are themselves likely to be many decades away and will because of the laws of supply and demand be all-but self limited. It is interesting that the cosmetics industry learned the public relations lesson very quickly, however, quickly discarding the nano label from products that contain liposomes, for instance, before consumers began worrying about their face turning to grey goo.

PNL’s Weber is well aware of the potential for a public relations crisis when it comes to nanoscience. “There are diverse types of nanomaterials being produced with unknown toxic potential,” he says, “This combination requires responsible stewardship by the scientific community over this rapidly developing field to enable maximum benefits while minimizing negative outcomes.”

“Advances are being made on various fundamental scientific aspects of the toxicity of nanomaterials as well as on rapid-screening tools to assess toxicity,” explains SK Sundaram, also at PNL, and a guest Editor on the IJNT special issue, “These advancements will help in enhancing the public awareness and dispelling many myths in this field, we hope.”

Despite the imaginary notion of a ubiquitous grey goo, the relative lack of tabloid media interest may be due in part to the diverse and esoteric nature of nanoscience. Whereas anyone might imagine some kind of monster GM tomato, it is rather difficult to visualise the scale of nanoparticles and of what they are composed, let alone how such particles might behave.