Mama, Dada, and Nano? Subparticles May Be Toxic for Kids.

AuthorHiggs, Steven
PositionEssay

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

All moms want the best for their babies. They seek the newest pacifiers and milk bottles for their newborns and give them plushy stuffed animals to play and sleep with. They look for the most protective sunscreen. And they're sure to be tempted by products like Nanover Wet Wipes, which boasts an ingredient that "inhibits multiplication and growth of those bacteria and fungi which cause infection, odor, itchiness, and sores."

But what mothers probably do not know is that many of those products contain materials made from nanotechnology, the process of manipulating and manufacturing matter at the tiniest of levels. (Three to six atoms can fit inside one nanometer.) And what they almost certainly do not know is that nanomaterials may be toxic.

In fact, scientists cannot say for sure just what happens when humans, especially developing children, breathe, absorb, or ingest engineered nanomaterials. They don't know where they go in the body, what they do when they're in there, or what their health impacts are. But some of what is known is ominous.

One early study, for example, showed that nanomaterials can cross the blood-brain barrier between the olfactory bulb and the brain. No one knows if they can cross the placental-blood barrier that protects a developing fetus's blood from its mother's.

In an essay in an upcoming edition of the Handbook on Children's Environmental Health , published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Philip Landrigan distills the potential health threats. "Nanoparticles may be able to produce toxic effects as a consequence of their ability to enter cells," the director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine writes. "Small size enhances cell entry and appears to be a major determinant of toxicity."

In a 2008 issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology , two researchers from Brown University noted that carbon nanotubes injected into mice in separate studies in England and Japan produced biological parallels to asbestos. The Japanese study found that a greater percentage of mice injected with carbon nanotubes developed tumors and lesions and scarring in the mesothelial lining than did mice injected with a particularly potent form of asbestos.

"These two studies provide scientific evidence for an asbestos-like pathologic response to carbon nanotubes, at least in certain cases," wrote researchers Agnes B. Kane and Robert H. Hurt.

D avid Rejeski runs the...

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