Study shows very little toxicity from buckyballs

Filed in archive Research on May 11, 2006

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have presented a study of the effects of carbon nanoparticle buckyballs and concluded, "nanoparticles exhibit very little cytotoxicity over controls."

That's good news for anyone bent out of shape over the MagicNano brouhaha and other recent concerns about nanoparticle Toxicity and nanotech safety. It certainly doesn't mean all nanoparticles are harmless, but it's good to see some hard evidence and detailed study coming forth to help people make up their minds about these issues.

Interestingly, the work, led by Dr. Rashi Iyer goes beyond testing toxicity. She cleverly realized that one of the most fundamental properties of nanoparticles is that we design them. With that in mind, Iyer and her team are working to not only determine cellular responses to molecularly engineered nanoparticles, but to predict them and then design particles that minimize negative biological effects.

Iyer presented her work, "Predicting cellular responses of functional fullerenes," at the Nano Science and Technology conference in Boston. (photo NYU)