Nanomaterials Could Harm Fish, Environment, People - Study

US: September 22, 2008

CHICAGO - Buckyballs, tiny soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules that hold promise for uses ranging from novel drug-delivery systems to fuel cells, may threaten health by building up in fat, researchers said on Friday.

The nanoparticles, one billionth of a meter wide, could potentially accumulate in fatty tissue of fish and other animals, they wrote in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"Our results show they are going to be taken up by fish and other organisms, possibly to toxic levels," said Chad Jafvert of Purdue University in Indiana.

Nanotechnology, the design and manipulation of materials thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, has been hailed as a way to make strong, lightweight materials, better cosmetics and even tastier food. But scientists are only starting to look at the impact such tiny objects might have.

Jafvert's team at Purdue focused on buckyballs -- short for buckminsterfullerenes or fullerenes. The hollow molecules, made up of 60 carbon atoms, take their name from American architect Buckminster Fuller, who designed the geodesic dome.

The researchers mixed buckyballs with water and octanol, which resembles animal fat, and found buckyballs accumulate in the fatty substance in greater concentrations than the banned pesticide DDT, which also accumulates in fats.

Concerns over the safety of buckyballs have been mounting. In 2005, lab tests showed they were toxic to soil bacteria, and other studies suggest they could cause significant brain damage in fish.

Some studies suggest that very tiny objects may have different effects in the body than larger ones.

It is not clear whether buckyballs will break down in the environment or be processed through an animal's metabolism, Jafvert said.

"We don't bioaccumulate sugars because we process sugars, but we do bioaccumulate other compounds that we don't metabolize," he said.

Understanding how buckyballs and other fullerenes act is important because manufacturers already are making millions of tons of them a year, Mary Haasch, a scientist working with the Environmental Protection Agency in Duluth, Minnesota, said in a telephone interview.

"The concern is not just that it might be bad for the fish. The people who are making it, we need to know if they are breathing this stuff in," she said.

This week, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency granted US$38 million to establish two Centers for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology at University of California at Los Angeles and Duke University in North Carolina.

Jafvert was encouraged the EPA was funding more research. "They've got to stay ahead of industry and that is often a difficult thing to do," he said. (Editing by Maggie Fox)

Story by Julie Steenhuysen

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE