Carbon nanotubes found in children’s lungs | Hacker News Reader

Carbon nanotubes found in children’s lungs

newscientist.com

62 pointssageabilly45 comments

More I see these, the more it makes me wonder if we understand enough about the impact of 'Nano materials' on the health of living species. Sometime back there was some discussion around how graphene being so minuscule, can penetrate human tissues in a a way that we don't know about.

Then much earlier - maybe couple of years back - there was some noise around nano silver particles, I haven't seen any conclusive discussion on that either.

A quick search brought forth this: "Silver as a metal does not pose any danger, but when you break it down to nano-sizes, the particles become small enough to penetrate a cell wall. If nano-silver enters a human cell, it can cause changes in the cell" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140227115424.ht...

Most likely not, same goes for any artificial material it takes decades until you are able to even begin to start understanding the effect on humans and until your body starts adopting to a new environment.

We now see our bodies starting to utilize mechanisms to repair the damage caused to DNA by the likes of smoking, and even that mechanism is only apparent in a very small part of the human population.

Nano materials are even more scary because depending on the actual material in question they can be made as fine as 100's or 1000's of molecules in size. Nanoscale Iron Oxide particles that first seemed to be quite bio-compatible now show signs of being potentially quite nasty http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3459910/

We have very little understanding of the chemistry and hence biological impact of materials when we encounter them in very small and unique forms that do not appear in nature.

Quite a few discoveries in material science and chemistry in the past few decades were a result of a field we though we mostly understood an element is an element no matter what, but now we know that the size and formation of elements on the molecular and atomic scales can have a huge impact on attributes of an element or a compound, whilst this isn't like rediscovering chemistry it does point at a very big and not yet understood part of it.

Nano particles are also quite nasty in the way that many of them can pass through some filtration and containment solutions we currently have including hazmat suits and long term storage containers so i think there is a need for a call to stop and think about this entire industry very carefully.

We now see our bodies starting to utilize mechanisms to repair the damage caused to DNA by the likes of smoking, and even that mechanism is only apparent in a very small part of the human population.

As an ex-smoker I'm interested to know more about that, this is the first I've heard of it. Do you have any links or distinctive technical terms I could search on? I don't want to go on a fishing expedition.

The latest Nobel prize in Chemistry might be a good start, more specific examples can be like specific (and apparently fairly recent) mutations in the XRCC1 gene that greatly reduce the risk of bladder cancer (which smokers normally have 3-5 times greater chance of contracting) in smokers. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

And there are probably 100's of other studies of various examples, our bodies constantly evolve to adapt to new environmental factors smoking is a fairly recent one but is still something that you could evolve to live with, not that we should count on that tho...

Breathing mosts kind of dust is not good for you... being cement, wood, asbestos... which is why workers wear dust masks.

There's bad and worse, naturally occurring dust including asbestos (more on that a head) while isn't good isn't necessarily a major health risk because we've evolved to live on this planet that well has dust.

While Asbestos isn't good the 2 types of Asbestos that actually pose a major health risk Amosite and Crocidolite are also the modern types of Asbestos that were discovered in the 19th century.

Serpentine which is the most common and oldest types of Asbestos while still being classified as a potential risk isn't a major health risk. You are exposed to natural sources of Asbestos every day, it's one of the oldest materials we've used, and it's a great analogy for nano materials because until very recent modern times when Asbestos production kicked off a new methods to produce longer and tougher Asbestos fibers it wasn't a major health risk.

The risky needle fibers that are known for giving people "asbestos lungs" aren't the common natural occurrence of Asbestos that we've been exposed too during most of our existence as a species, including the 5000 thousands or so years we've been using it. They are a product of modern manufacturing techniques just like nano-particles are a product of more recent manufacturing and engineering.

Interestingly enough, if you look at the "spider webs" of a large forest fire or a house fire, what you are looking at are carbon nanotubes. While difficult to selectively make single walled or double walled, free carbon in the presence of a static field (which is pretty much everywhere) has a chance to form a tubular shape (and also buckyballs). I did some experiments using acetylene in a low oxygen environment to create a lot of free carbon (aka soot :-)) when trying to find ways to make conductive nanotubes reliably.

Further, this isn't a "new" phenomena, so I expect the raging wildfires around the world are the primary source for nanotubes in the lungs.

I'm not saying that carbon nanotubes are a health risk, the might be and they might not be.

There are plenty of nano particles that are created in nature, the question comes what happens when we create similar but not identical particles, a small change in Asbestos fibers due to modern manufacturing turned them form a mostly benign annoyance that clears the lungs easily into microscopic razor blades that cause scar tissue to form leading to multiple diseases.

Soot is natural nanoparticles so as long as there been fires we've been exposed to them in certain levels, however we've been exposed to nanoparticles that have been created under certain conditions and a small change in their size, shape or other properties might very large implications on their chemical and biological interactions.

Breathing wood smoke is a terrible health hazard, and people have been suffering the consequences of cooking over wood-fire hearths in small poorly ventilated houses for millennia.

The air pollution we used to breathe every day in peasant agricultural societies (and still do in many parts of the world) is worse than the worst smog days in a city powered by coal burning power plants or the worst second-hand cigarette smoke you’ll breathe going to parties filled with chain smokers.

You shouldn’t assume something is safe just because it is “natural”.

I really doubt it's going to be found in quantities large enough to make harvesting it economical.

"found in all of 64 children" "also found in vehicle exhaust"

Are there several definitions of nanotubes, one of them including a lot of carbon chains?

I didn't read the article, and I'm no chemist, but I wouldn't be surprised if combustion produces carbon nanotubes. Buckyballs were discovered to be present in candle soot.

Sounds like a great warning. Nanoparticles have the potential to be even more carcinogenic than asbestos, they will irreversibly permeate the ecosystem.

I agree with you that these particles should be studied for their potential health and environmental impact, but combustion has been around much longer than humanity. I think that not all these particles are made equal and that being said I don't think that the nanotubes found in this study are much like what we are trying to create for technological purposes. They are probably very short/small and the article mentioned "[these] nanotubes are unlikely to have the cancer-causing potential of asbestos fibres, which are much larger and can get trapped in the lining of the lung." I believe their impact should be studied but there are also many other combustion products that probably have a larger negative impact.

My comment is directed at synthetic nanoparticles, not historically present forms. Waiting until it is determined that nanoparticles are unsafe is too long. These things need to be proven safe before being allowed in the environment.

Can you explain the difference between "synthetic" and "historically present" in a way that doesn't ascribe some inexplicable magic to the existence of man?

Not even that, but rather, the last [n] years of man in particular!

It has been found that various organisms can degrade carbon nanotubes, so they won't irreversibly permeate the ecosystem[0]. But we really shouldn't be dumping them into the air.

[0] http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v5/n5/full/nnano.2010.44...

Just because horseradish can break down nanotubes doesn't mean I can inject into the cells I already have. The existence of a catalyst doesn't make nanotubes suddenly safe.

Fortunately, that's not what your parent poster said.

And I can't read the whole paper since it is paywalled.

> We have shown previously that single-walled carbon nanotubes can be catalytically biodegraded over several weeks by the plant-derived enzyme, horseradish peroxidase1.

If nanotubes exist in car exhaust and buckyballs in candle soot then we've already performed a huge experiment on loads of people. Life expectancy is still increasing...

Life expectancy is a really poor metric. When accounting for the average life expectancy due to huge drop in infant mortality, LE has made very low gains at a high economic and medical cost. I was commenting that if naturally occurring nanoparticles as created in combustion are getting lodged into tissue, that synthetic nanoparticles have the same opportunity. Combustion byproducts are already known carcinogens.

"every mouthful of food you and I have ever taken contained many billions of kinds of complex molecules whose structure and physiological effects have never been determined—and many millions of which would be toxic or fatal in large doses. We cannot doubt that we are daily ingesting thousands of substances that are far more dangerous than saccharin—but in amounts that are safe, because they are far below the various thresholds of toxicity. But at present there is hardly any substance except some common drugs, for which we actually know the threshold."

E. T. Jaynes

>life expectancy is still increasing...*

Yet cancer, Alzheimer's, autism, etc. are on the rise.

Cancer and Alzheimer's are on the rise because life expectancy is increasing.

Nope. That only explains a portion of the increase.

Got a convincing and well-sourced statistical argument on that one?

Yes. Do you for your declaration?

Because we are better at diagnosing them then years ago. It does not mean that there are more cases of "cancer, Alzheimer's, autism, etc.". People diagnosed with Asperger syndrome would be called quirky, or plainly weird twenty years ago.

Nope. Doesn't explain it away. Real rates are rising.

Too late. Nanoparticles have already irreversibly permeated the ecosystem.

Since long before Man, of course.

Being afraid of "nanoparticles" is something like being afraid of "chemicals"... in the fully silly sense. You need to be afraid of something specific, not the general term.

And I'm actually pretty down with a "presumed guilty until innocent" for specific, demonstrably new nanoparticles. (Most, if not all, carbon forms aren't going to be able to meet that bar, BTW.) Given the history of science and biology, that's not irrational. Generalized fear of anything "nanoparticle" is, though. The biological world has been nanoparticling just as it's been nanomachining for a lot longer than we've been here to worry about it.

I don't have the finger bandwidth to caveat every statement I make. Yes _new_ nanoparticles. I could make a new nanocoating, apply it to everything and then when it turns out to not by safe, my Inc can fold and I can continue on my merry existence. Nanoparticle toxocology is a complex field. And these _new_ substances penetrate cells walls very readily. It isn't antiscience to question the harm these things can do.

I don't know what definition of carbon nanotube includes something with a long chain of carbon, but in general carbon nanotubes refers to tiny tube structures composed of aromatic carbon( carbon connected to 3 other carbons). Vehicle exhaust and other combustion processes can produce a bunch of weird structures consisting of aromatic carbon, some of which are tube shaped:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~apgriesh/pubs/lagally_ast_2012.pdf

Another obvious question that wasn't answered is whether children without asthma or adults have nanotubes in their lungs.

I really dislike when an article waits til the end to explain why I shouldn't care. First half of the article is all about how we should worry and care about this thing. Second half of the article is, "actually you should just disregard everything we just said."

My wife (tech writer) calls this the 'mystery novel' form of essay. She says Engineers are particularly guilty of writing that way. She was right, in my case anyway. For a while after I married her I would go through all my writing and move the last sentence in each paragraph to first. Because I did it all the time.

This sounds similar to 'burying the punchline' which we are also prone to do.

If you have a solution to the problem you are describing, please notify us in the first paragraph so we don't think you're just complaining.

I would guess the particles are from diesel soot[0], but that doesn't make sense that it's the 'first time they have been found', as diesel engines have been popular in Europe for decades.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust#Effect_of_parti...

> that doesn't make sense that it's the 'first time they have been found'

First time it's been looked for would make it the first time it's been found if it's common.

This is the first time they have been found in humans and not just engine exhaust. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Especially considering there have been some rather heated "anti-nanotechnology" protests in france[0]. At best this could lead to better particulate emissions standards.

[0] http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/January/22011001...

Bracing now for the Facebook clickbait posts about a supposed link between nanotubes and autism.

Don't borrow trouble.

I have a few tennis rackets made from carbon nanotubes, should I be worried?

Just don't powder them, or, if you do, don't snort the powder.

Just use common sense, in other words.

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