Will wonders never cease?: A hypochondriac surfer...
Courtesy RickydavidIronic, isn’t it? Silver kills werewolves, werewolves hate silver…and yet these ancient enemies are more alike than they ever knew.
As we all know, materials start to get a little crazy when they approach the nano scale. Try as I might to crush bacteria to death with my silverware (beats washing it), silver on the flatware scale is not a very effective antimicrobial material.
When you get down to the nano scale, however, where silver particles are just a few billionths of a meter, it’s no longer like chasing down flagellates with a spoon. Really, nothing is quite like chasing down flagellates with a spoon, but all comparison is lost in the case of nano-silver.
It has been known for years now that nanoparticles of silver are able destroy harmful bacteria. The nanoparticles generate unique chemicals, known as “highly reactive oxygen species,” which inhibit the growth of bacteria. This is great, because we all hate those harmful bacteria. Nano-silver, for instance, is already found in certain fabrics to destroy odor-causing bacteria, and some high-tech washing machines generate tiny particles of silver for essentially the same reason.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming clear that these glittery little assassins may be the enemy of all bacteria, harmful and helpful.
It’s like this: we’d all love werewolves if they just spent their days tearing apart mummies, because mummies are gross and dangerous. But when werewolves start ripping into other more beneficial monsters, like Frankensteins, well, then they tend to lose favor. Frankensteins may be gross, but they have good hearts.
These tiny silver particles, according to researchers at the University of Missouri, have been ripping into Frankensteins. It’s been observed that nano-silver kills off beneficial, benign bacteria, like that used for wastewater treatment. As consumer use of nano-incorporating products increases, so to will the amount of artificial nano particles in the waste stream. Eventually this could kill off vital microbial species in rivers, streams, and lakes, as well as those used in wastewater treatment. There may be indirect consequences as well—for instance, the “sludge” byproduct of wastewater treatment is frequently used as land-application fertilizer. If silver nanoparticles accumulate in high enough levels in this sludge, they could end up seriously damaging the soil we use to grow our food crops.
This isn’t to say that we should necessarily halt our use of nano products, but it’s a reminder of how little we still know about nanotechnology. While we’ve had hundreds of years to learn to learn the ins and outs of deal with werewolves, nanotechnology is still pretty mysterious.
The University of Missouri will soon be launching a second study to determine the levels at which silver nanoparticles become toxic, and to exactly what extent they harm microbes in wastewater.
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A blue sculpture of a man: or a sculpture of a blue man?
Courtesy rbrwrOh, the things we learn from local news stations’ websites. Take this story, for example, brought to you by the hard-hitting news team of KVAL 13 out of Eugene, Oregon.
Due to their reported inability to be nice to him, Oregon is losing one of the world’s very few blue people to California. Typical – California gets everything (I’m thinking of the Wu-Tang Clan and Pauly Shore here). The blue man, one Paul Karason, is heading south in search of greener pastures, and he’s taking his condition with him.
The condition, known as argyria, is awfully rare, although not unheard of. Argyria is generally the result of ingesting too much colloidal silver (nano-sized particles of silver in liquid suspension). Colloidal silver is marketed as a dietary supplement, and many people (including Karason) believe it to be a sort of cure-all. Whenever your dealing with nano-sized particles, however, things are bound to get a little unusual, and colloidal silver’s actual ability to do any curing is perhaps debatable, although if turning your skin gray-blue is something you’re into, it may be the way to go. As silver particles deposit in the skin, as the internet has explained it to me, they begin to darken with exposure to sunlight (as in a silver emulsion photograph), resulting, in some people, in skin tones ranging from ashy to smurf. It doesn’t seem that there are any other significant health effects from colloidal silver consumption, although this site points out that silver is toxic (carcinogenic, in fact), and doesn’t actually play any role in the human body, and wikipedia mentions, as an aside, that extreme colloidal silver overdoses can lead to, ah, penile atrophy. I don’t know why this was an aside – it should have been the focus of the article.
It’s all certainly something to consider, isn’t it? Just last night I tried Goldschlager for the first time, hoping that it might turn me into a shining, golden man. And it did, in a way, but mostly it just turned my mouth kind of cinnamony, and my stomach kind of sour. That’s probably for the best, I suppose, because I’m not sure Minnesota could deal with a gold man any better than Oregon could deal with a blue one, and I’m not ready to move to California yet.
Robin Low: What will he think about new regulations? Robin Low makes textiles using nanotechnology. Ask him what he thinks about these new regulations.
Nanotechnology research is kicking into full gear the world over but almost everyone agrees that we simply don't know how to properly regulate its use. What will particles billions of times smaller than a meter do to our bodies and the environment? Well...they might cure our cancers and clean up our water. But they also might penetrate our blood brain barriers and stick in our gray matter or cause ecosystems to decline due to tiny tiny pollutants.
EPA takes a step in the right direction
Well, at least our government is beginning to look at this stuff. The EPA announced on Thursday that they will be regulating all use of nano-silver in US commercial products. If you make odor eating socks with nano-silver you now have to make sure that it won't get out into the environment and cause harm.
The city of Berkeley, California is also looking at creating the first local government nanotech regulations. This isn't surprising for two reasons.
- Berkeley has long history of being environmentally conscious and has a very active political community, often leading detractors and jokesters to dub this enclave The Socialist Republik of Berkeley
- They actually play host to a great deal of research into nanotechnology at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They have a vested interest in protecting their communities from the potential harmful effects of nanotech research.
I will be watching this closely and hope that the concerned community members and the scientists can come to some middle ground where research isn't totally crippled by massive regulation but where unknown safety risks are considered.
Fun times in the nanoworld.
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