Buckyballs are common nanoparticles used in dry lubricants and in semiconductor manufacture. They are hollow spheres consisting of 60 carbon atoms. Also, it is possible they could wipe out all life on the earth.
Quoted information here is from a piece in the 12/19/05 Electronic Engineering Times, "Buckyballs may be hazardous to your DNA"
Apparently, buckyballs sense a strong, and very dysfunctional, attachment to our DNA-
[...] computer simulations performed at Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratories researchers show that buckyballs have a strong affinity for animal DNA, attaching to it in a manner that prevents it from performing the reproductive actions necessary for cells to mount immune-system responses or even to repair themselves.
According to Vanderbilt University engineering professor Peter Cummings, one of those who performed the simulations-
[...] these calculations come at just the right time, when researchers can study just how toxic buckyballs and other nanoparticles may or may not be--before they are mass produced.
[...]
What we want to know now is: Which of the nanoscale building blocks have an affinity for living tissue, and if they do, where will they end up in our bodies?
This same trade-journal had an article a month ago about how it was experimentally verified that aluminum-oxide nanoparticles in the water supply of several food-producing plants--corn, cucumbers, cabbage, carrots, and soybeans--stunted their growth.
Even worse, last year professor Eva Oberdorster of Southern Methodist University reported experimental evidence that the presence of buckyballs in water killed water fleas and damaged the brains of fish.
[Dr. Oberdorster, from
another source (Toxic warning #10), commenting on the fish study, "Given the rapid onset of brain damage, it is important to further test and assess the risks and benefits of this new technology before use becomes even more widespread."]
Returning to Dr. Cummings and the simulations, he explains how buckyballs can prevent DNA from telling cells how to make proteins and how buckyballs block successful DNA copying-
The team's molecular model showed that buckyballs fit precisely into two spots on the spiraled helix of DNA molecules. Buckyballs could lodge at both the end of DNA strands or in the minor grooves along the outside of the DNA. In either case, the binding will cause the DNA molecule to over to one side. The damage was most severe when the cell was reproducing by splitting into two separate helices, as it does when it divides or when it manufactures new proteins. The presence of buckyballs prevents both actions from happening.
A member of Cumming's team as a grad student, now professor Alberto Striolo-
The worst thing is the strong binding energy between buckyballs and DNA--energies comparable to those binding drugs to receptors, [...].
[...]
The best we can hope for is that we are wrong.
Professor Cummings reassures us that the commercially more booming manufacture and use of nanotubes is probably not as dangerous-
... carbon nanotubes, which are much larger because they are usually quite long. We expect that the possibility of nanotubes getting through the skin, into the tissues, the cell and the nucleus is much more remote than (with) buckyballs.
If you didn't link over to the site that mentions the fish study, here's your handy second chance. The article discusses more than just that one aspect, in fact it's more frightening than what you've read here so far. The article brings up prices and production quantities, it mentions a Japanese company that makes nanoparticles in industrial quantities and brags about its 300-customer sales list.
Here's an article about plans to build a production facility in Danville, VA to make buckyballs used as contrast-agents in MRI scans and other military or commercial uses. Scroll down about 3 topics.
These are dangerous times to politicize science and dumb-down education. We need all the smart, questioning people we can get.