COULD nanotechnology revive an old killer? That鈥檚 the fear being raised by the discovery that carbon nanotubes shred the lung lining in a similar way to asbestos fibres.
Ken Donaldson at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues injected carbon nanotubes into the abdominal cavity of mice. One week later, the tissue surrounding the abdominal organs of the mice showed a level of inflammation similar to that caused by asbestos exposure. Only needle-like fibres longer than 20 micrometres caused damage (Nature Nanotechnology, ).
Industrial exposure to airborne asbestos led to widespread lung disease in the 20th century. But inhalation of nanotubes is unlikely, says Donaldson, because they tend to be electrically charged and so clump together, making them too heavy to become airborne. They probably wouldn鈥檛 cause problems if ingested either. 鈥淵ou can feed rats with asbestos for their entire life and see no immune reaction,鈥� Donaldson says.
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