Well, if you really want to treat lead poisoning, you need a way to get it out of people's bones and organs. It doesn't stick around in the blood long term. And we already have chelation therapy for getting heavy metals out of blood.
Yeah, I wondered about that. Blood lead levels remain high, though, correct? Seems like an alternative to the significant risks of chelation could be useful?
Given that it is all metals including heavy ones I suspect these sponges would be even worse than chelation, even if it left calcium alone. Hello anemia.
Hey! Author from the paper here! This is not a dumb question at all. There are already pretty good processes for treating lead poisoning, such as chelating agents. These nanomaterials, while not terrible for the body, are probably not the best things to ingest to treat Pb poisoning.
Probably not, lead ions are problematic because of the absorption of lead ions as if they were calcium ions at the cellular level.