Washington Post: Nanotech raises worker-safety problem.

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Nanotech Raises Worker-Safety Questions By Rick WeissWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, April 8, 2006; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040701725_pf.html Excerpts: RENO, Nev. -- As the U.S. economy strides into the age of nanotechnology, thousands of workers like these are participants in a seat-of-the-pants occupational health experiment. No state or federal worker-protection rules address the specific risks of nanomaterials, even though many laboratory and animal studies have shown that nano-size particles -- those on the order of a millionth of a millimeter -- spur peculiar biological reactions and can be far more toxic than larger granules of

the same chemicals. Regulators say they need more data before setting standards. But of the $1.2 billion the government has proposed spending on its National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2007 -- a research funding program to help jump-start the promising sector -- only about two-tenths of 1 percent is earmarked to study workplace safety issues. . Just three weeks in a workplace with that level of engineered nanospecks would be equivalent to the exposure that caused animals to choke to death in experiments in 2004, Balbus said. Then again, government scientists admit, the science is so young that they do not even know what they should be focusing on: Is it the number of particles a person is exposed to that matters most? Is it their chemical composition or size? Or, as recent research suggests, is it the total surface area of each intricately etched nanoparticle -- a complex spatial dimension that instruments

can barely measure? "We have very little data to make any kind of informed societal decisions about how to deal with nanomaterials in the workplace," said Paul Schulte, the director of education and information at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Occupational settings have often served as bellwethers of toxic trouble. A spate of skin cancers in radiologists 100 years ago revealed the link between X-rays and cancer. "Mad hatters," who worked with mercury-exposed felt, demonstrated that metal's neurotoxic effects. And the link between asbestos and lung disease first came to light in workers handling the fibrous mineral. Engineered nanomaterials, including geometric spheres smaller than viruses and hollow tubes just a few atoms in diameter, have just begun to be incorporated in a wide range of products, from sunscreens and clothing to aircraft parts. Early studies suggest many are likely to be innocuous.

People are exposed to naturally occurring nanoparticles all the time, industry boosters note, including nanospecks of salt blowing in from the ocean. But with their complex, chemically reactive surfaces, engineered nanoparticles act differently than natural ones. That can be helpful, allowing them to ferry drug molecules to cells that need them or conduct electricity through materials that would otherwise be resistant. At the same time, animal studies show they can also clog airways, trigger intense immune-system reactions and toast living cells. Time will tell how much of a health risk various nanomaterials pose. But experts agree that workers producing them face the greatest danger because they are exposed to the free-floating motes directly, before they have been integrated into finished products. © 2006 The Washington Post Company "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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