Washington Post: Nanotech raises worker-safety problem.

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Nanotech Raises Worker-Safety Questions

By Rick Weiss

 

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, 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

 

 

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