Carbon nanotubes are often hailed as the best thing since sliced bread and a technological innovation that will change our lives in a myriad of ways, but unfortunately a study just published expresses concerns about their safety and compares them to asbestos due to their potential ability to cause inflammation and lesions when inhaled.
"Researchers with British institutes and the U.S.-based Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies injected mice with asbestos and with commercial samples of carbon nanotubes of varying sizes. When they examined the lining of the rodents' abdominal cavities, the researchers observed that longer nanotubes behaved like asbestos, provoking inflammation and lesions."
This is very much just a preliminary study and it seems a lot more testing is needed to determine if carbon nanotubes are a health hazard.
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