Extracted from Environmental Management News  

Monday, 28 September 2009

An unforeseen danger has begun to emerge with the growing use of nanoparticles causing a new form of unregulated pollution that has the potential to harm the environment, Dr Tomas Vanek from the Laboratory of Plant Biotechnologies in the Czech Republic warned the CleanUp 09 conference in Adelaide today.

"This is a new area of research and much more study is required, but we need to understand whether nanoparticles are dangerous to the environment and that we can create guidelines to safely use them," Dr Vanek said.

Dr Vanek and his team are one of the first groups in the world to show that ‘nanopollution' can harm plants.

The research group tested commonly used nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide, zinc peroxide, aluminium oxide, fullerenes and carbon graphite fibres on tobacco plant cells and found that at varying levels the molecules were toxic to the plant.

"If we are going to keep using nanoparticles we need to know whether we're putting ourselves and the environment in danger, and if so, how to minimise it," said Dr Vanek.

Nanoparticles, which are extremely small in size (billionths of a metre), are ideal for use in a growing range of industries and products. But their micro-scale also allows them to escape through filters and into the environment, including the possibility to enter the human body.

Body creams and toothpastes increasingly contain nanoparticles, as do a range of commercial products and a variety of materials. Nanomaterial are also applied directly to ecosystems in order to clean up other unwanted pollutants.

"The use of these tiny particles of metal and chemicals is quite new and we still don't know whether they're dangerous and how, or if, we can clean them up," Dr Vanek said.

""In the past we used many chemicals in agriculture and industry, only to find out afterwards they were damaging to human health and the environment. We do not want to make the same mistake with nanotechnologies, releasing unknown materials that turn out to be toxic and then finding they are difficult or even impossible to recall or make safe."

He also believes a lot more research also needs to go into ways to remediate nanopollution in order to safely and sustainably manage the technology.

The CleanUp 09 conference in Adelaide over the next few days is being hosted by the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment.