Pittsburgh, PA (1888PressRelease)
April 17, 2009 - BACKGROUND, Nanoparticles (NPs) offer mankind with unlimited potential uses in technology. NPs are currently used in electronics, cosmetics, chemical manufacturing, solar cells, among other industries. NPs are now being used as an antibacterial agent in food processing and homogenizing beer. Medicinally, NPs are used to reduce infections in burn treatment, limiting bacteria colonization on human skin, sunscreen lotions, and treating cancer tumors.
However, there is a downside.
Over the past decade, experiments have unequivocally shown NPs be a health risk. NPs induce DNA damage in mammalian cells, reduce mitochondrial function, produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the form of hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide that induce apoptosis/cell death, and cause single strand (SS) and double strand (DS) breaks in DNA.
NPs by offering both exceptional technological advances and serious downside health risks beg the question:
What is the NP mechanism?
In the 1990’s, reactive oxygen species (ROS) thought to cause the hemolytic activity of red blood cells was the hydroxyl radical. In producing the hydroxyl radical from silica NPs, the iron in the hemoglobin reacted with hydrogen peroxide in a Fenton reaction. However, the specific reaction leading to formation of hydrogen peroxide has never been identified.
In 2003 without a NP mechanism to produce hydrogen peroxide, the oxidative stress paradigm was formulated in 2003 that simply stated the measure of ROS was the area of < 100 nm NPs, although the NP mechanism by which the ROS are formed was not defined. However, the oxidative stress paradigm was soon questioned because experimental data of coarse (10-2.5 microns) particulate matter showed higher hydroxyl radical concentration than fine.
###
