Nanosecurity: are you going the right way, comrades?

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ChemPort.Ru based on Chemistry World: Review finds nanosafety is no small issue

The conclusion from the review conducted by Swiss researchers of more than 6,000 papers devoted to the problem of toxicity of nanomaterials (nanotoxicity – nanotoxicity) is that it is necessary to unify the standards of research and quality assessment.

One of the signs of the last decade is the rapid growth of research on nanotechnology and nanomaterials.

Thanks to the results of these studies, nanomaterials have already appeared in objects and objects around us – for example, sunscreens, paints for exterior and interior work, or scratch-resistant glasses. Nanoparticles are also considered as promising objects for targeted drug delivery or tissue repair.

The change in properties when the size of these materials changes, first of all, a significant increase in the "surface area/volume" ratio means that the properties of nanomaterials, including their chemical and physiological activity, will differ significantly from the properties of the same material, represented by a condensed, "compact" state.

Difficulties in assessing the chemical behavior of the nanoform of a substance lead to the fact that it is quite difficult to predict a priori what effect a particular material will have both on the state of individual organisms, including humans, and on the state of the environment.

Due to the potential danger of nanosystems, many European countries have introduced mandatory or voluntary (depending on the country) registration of products containing nanoparticles; due to the spread of nanotechnology, the task of determining the toxicological properties of nanosystems obviously receives high priority. Since 2000, about 10,000 papers have been published on the study of nanotoxicity, and half of these papers have been published in the last three years.

To get a general picture of the ideas about nanotoxicity, Harald Krug analyzed about 6,600 papers devoted to this problem. First of all, as Krug notes, his big disappointment was the fact that a number of works contained serious errors. These errors were mainly reduced to an insufficient number of characteristics of a particular nanomaterial, problems with its degree of purity, lack of information about control experiments, as well as inappropriate concentrations of "potential threat" used for study, both in vitro and in vivo. Krug states that since in many works people simply neglect the basic rules of toxicological research, it is impossible to draw any acceptable conclusion about nanotoxicity from the result of their work. The greatest indignation of the Swiss researcher was caused by those "in vivo experiments in which grams, not milligrams or micrograms of the studied drug per kilogram were used to assess the toxic effect. Obviously, at such doses, we can talk about the deadly danger not only of nanomaterials, but also of ordinary table salt (LD50 NaCl for rats is 3 g/kg, and for humans – 12.4 g/kg).

As Krug notes, the reason for such ridiculous conclusions and results that he had to read in a number of papers is that funds have been allocated for toxicological studies of nanosystems in Europe relatively recently. The situation is such that many expert laboratories in Europe have long been on the verge of closure and lack of funding, as a result of which there are simply not enough educated, reasonably qualified young researchers capable of conducting toxicological studies without making annoying mistakes.

Another reason for the large number of studies that report a significant negative impact of nanosystems on health, Krug sees that under the influence of public opinion and wanting to get published as soon as possible, many researchers immediately set out to find an example of this most negative impact on health and, of course, find it. However, the same motivation is also observed for some works in which the safety of a particular nanomaterial is proved (in different works from different researchers, the same material can be described as "extremely dangerous" and "mostly safe) – in this case, toxicologists are under pressure from manufacturers who seek to release faster the product is on the market, and for this, accordingly, a safety certificate is needed.

Toxicology specialist Tim Nurkiewicz agrees with Krug's conclusions, emphasizing that in any case, the option when the article describes an already "predetermined result" is a vicious practice, because in the end, research in the field of toxicology concerns human health issues.

Article by Harald F. Krug Nanosafety Research – Are We on the Right Track? published in open access in a special issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie, dedicated to the problems of nanotechnology, nanomaterials, nanotoxicology and nanomedicine.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.11.2014