Mesothelioma has long been linked to the inhalation and exposure to asbestos fibers and dust, so when scientists uncovered an additional potential cause for this incurable form of lung cancer, the unthinkable became a reality.
According to researchers based out of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C., the early 90′s development of carbon nanotubes has been an amazing feat for technological applications, however, it has not gone without its price. Specifically, carbon nanotubes may be causing harm to the human body in the form of mesothelioma cancer.
If the carbon nanotubes are introduced into the wrong environment, the development of lesions and inflammation of the lungs occurs – symptoms similar to that of mesothelioma cancer and asbestos exposure. Researchers uncovered the finding through exposure of carbon nanotubes to animals.
Dr. Andrew Maynard, who published a study in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, described the use of nanotubes and the potential link to mesothelioma cancer. He said that currently, nanotubes are being implemented because of their awesome abilities at conducting heat and electricity. Mostly, Dr. Maynard explains, the nanotubes are being implemented into sports equipment. He said that there are no regulations as to where nanotubes can be implemented and there are currently no requirements for the use of nanotubes to be disclosed to the general public.
What Are Nanotubes?
According to Maynard, nanotubes are a product of nanotechnology research, one he considers the “poster child” of nanotechnology. The nanotubes are cylindrical structures comprised of carbon atoms that have been rolled together. Maynard’s study found that when mice were exposed to nanotubes, they developed asbestos-induced symptoms within the lungs. While he and other researchers consider nanotubes to be safe – when encased – the risk occurs when nanotubes are incinerated or broken.
Nanotubes are currently being used in:
* a variety of sports equipment
* bicycle frames
* tennis rackets
* electronic gas detectors
* radios
Additionally, because of the strength of nanotubes, many consider its future use to vastly effect several business ventures and areas, and be widely used in industries including:
* aerospace
* automobile
* airplanes
* television box productions
* medical
* environmental uses
Working with Nanotubes
While the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is doing research on nanotoxicology, there is little knowledge or research currently available regarding the safety of using nanotechnology. Additionally, Dr. Maynard noted that because of the ever-increasing nanotechnology industry, which is likely to be worth $2.6 trillion by 2014, it will be difficult to adequately and accurately assess nanotechnology safety because of the technology’s quick growth, which is also being used in the food industry.
Transparency of nanotoxicology among some nanotechnologically-produced products may fall into the hands of manufacturers and producers, which John M. Balbus, health program chief for the Environmental Defense Fund who was interviewed in a Washington Post article on nanotechnology, said could either be a very good thing with open communications, or a very bad thing replicating the mistakes made among the construction industry’s use of asbestos. However, he noted that upfront communication regarding the dangers of nanotechnology with the public may increase because of the previous mistakes made by other industries in hiding mesothelioma conditions from the public.
Finding Help with Nanotube Related Mesothelioma
Individuals, especially nanotube factory workers who have previously worked with carbon nanotubes or have been exposed to the potential dangers associated with the nanotubes and developing mesothelioma should receive medical attention immediately.
It may also become necessary for these individuals to locate a law firm with knowledge of mesothelioma-related litigation in order to develop a mesothelioma lawsuit.
Because of the nature of the industry and the continued funding flooding into carbon nanotube research it is important to develop a lawsuit that will also alert others, in a similar predicament, and provide aware of the potentially serious health risks associated with nanotechnology. Further, because only 5 percent of the funding, which consists of billions of dollars annually, provided by the National Nanotechnology Institute is going toward health and safety research, it is important for individuals with nanotube-induced mesothelioma to develop a lawsuit that may offer monetary compensation to victims suffering from this irreversible and deadly lung cancer.
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Help answer the question about carbon nanotubes
How strong exactly are carbon nanotubes?I don't mean in terms of obscure units like psi but in terms of concrete examples such as would an inch of solid carbon nanotubes be able to withstand an explosion of a sizable amount of plastic explosives a foot away?
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Carbon nanotube (CNT) is a new form of carbon, configurationally equivalent to two dimensional graphene sheet rolled into a tube. It is grown now by several techniques in the laboratory and is just a few nanometers in diameter and several microns long.
CNT can be metallic or semiconducting and offers amazing possibilities to create future nanoelectronics devices, circuits, and computers.
CNT exhibits extraordinary mechanical properties: the Young's modulus is over 1 Tera Pascal. It is stiff as diamond. The estimated tensile strength is 200 Giga Pascal. These properties are ideal for reinforced composites, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS).
The nanomaterials are harvested by being placed in a liquid solvent, such as ethanol, and blasted with ultrasonic waves to loosen them from the wafer surface. Researchers must then sort through the billions of nanowires or nanotubes to find the few that meet the specifications they need for their sensor applications.
of research going on. While they may not be specific to nanotubes, they do pertain to nanotechnology. One example uses nanotechnology circuits and nano-materials to build a sensor to sense pH levels in biological systems.
If nanobots were to exist one day, they would not likely “see” in the traditional meaning. That is, they will not have “eyes” that use visible light to see their surroundings. Instead, they will “see” via sensors that sense their environments, such as the pH level, or glucose level in blood…etc, or sense things in very close proximity, e.g. whether they are touching/attached to a red blood cell, white blood cell, or other cell types. In this regard (sensing as “seeing”), there is a lot
Carbon nanotubes, long, thin cylinders of carbon, were discovered in 1991 by S. Iijima. These are large macromolecules that are unique for their size, shape, and remarkable physical properties. They can be thought of as a sheet of graphite (a hexagonal lattice of carbon) rolled into a cylinder. These intriguing structures have sparked much excitement in the recent years and a large amount of research has been dedicated to their understanding. Currently, the physical properties are still being discovered and disputed. What makes it so difficult is that nanotubes have a very broad range of electonic, thermal, and structural properties that change depending on the different kinds of nanotube (defined by its diameter, length, and chirality, or twist). To make things more interesting, besides having a single cylindrical wall (SWNTs), nanotubes can have multiple walls (MWNTs)–cylinders inside the other cylinders. nanotubes are of great interest because of their remarkable structural, electronic and mechanical properties. They may also lead to rich industrial developments. they also have been used to design and constructed many sensors. in near future NASA is going to use them in space.
which may help the body heal (though the nanotube itself does not do the healing directly).
3. This is an interesting idea and perhaps something along these lines can be investigated. While it there are already anti-stick nano coatings today (e.g. teflon in your pots/pans, specially treated windshields…), I do not think they will be used on roads. The main reason is that if rain and water don’t stick to the road, it’s likely your car’s tires won’t either, which is very bad.
General questions are very welcome.
My personal opinions to your questions (the future is always hard to predict, so I can only offer you my opinion):
1. Search “Super-thin nanotube body armor promises to stop and deflect bullets”. It is an article on nanotubes for body armor applications. While I may not agree with the entire article, I do think that nanotubes have plenty of applications besides electronics.
It's not necessarily something that carbon nanotubes specifically used for, so much as a broad application you can also use carbon nanotubes for. The main way they detect glucose is that you put an enzyme (glucose oxidase) on the surface of an electrode. The enzyme in the presence of glucose will make hydrogen peroxide which your electrode can then reduce. When your electrode reacts with the peroxide, the current flowing can be measured (actually there are a variety of electrical properties you could choose to measure, we'll just use current as an example), and based on a known conversion factor, that current signal can be used to estimate how much glucose is present. Recently carbon nanotubes have been used as a new kind of electrode for this process.
Instead, an alternative may be to add something on the road and car tires which help them stick to each other, despite rain/snow. Or, to add something to the road which causes water to have a suppressed freezing point when it’s wetting the road. This will lead to less ice and black ice, which could help improve road conditions. However, all this is just a possibility, and may or may not materialize.
yes.
-nanotubes are indeed light-weight given its strength
-nanotubes, mixed in with various materials, have been shown to improve the mechanical properties of those various materials
i have heard of people that make nanotube in solution and then applying a weak magnetic force to allow for them to line up and then evaporating the solution. but it depends alot on the substrate you are trying to apply this to and the overall properties you want to see out of the single walled or multi walled carbon nanotube. here is one i found from JACS wesite
J. Phys. Chem. B, 2002, 106 (16), pp 4139–4144
DOI: 10.1021/jp0140872
Publication Date (Web): March 30, 2002
Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society
Thank you for your opinion. While I will not speculate on this possibility, allow me to provide some related facts:
-nanotubes are one of the strongest materials known, if you normalize to it’s nano size (tensile strength is more than steel & diamonds)
-however, nanotubes in bulk, may or may not be super-strong, depending on how it is woven (or not) into a form of fiber
A carbon nanotube has a tensile strength 50 times that of steel, and a strength-to-weight ratio of over 300 times that of steel.
Things like "withstanding an explosion" have far too many variables to make a worthwhile comparison.
Short: the silicon is not there and does not matter
Long: There is no silicon disc in the original scholar paper (reference #1). The nanotubes are grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD, reference #3) on silicon wafers, but are then peeled off (possibly with a razor blade – refs. #2 and #4) as a freestanding film having 0.045% index of reflection. The guys in reference #2 also grew the tubes on metal films and nanoparticles (they originally developed the CVD method to grow carbon nanotubes). Their tubes have slightly different properties, so Ajayan tweaked the process a little bit to get the desired nanotube properties (this is a function of growing conditions). The silicon does not matter.
My research group grows silicon nanowires in a very similar manner (ref. #4, our paper actually cites ref. #1), and there we just have plain covalent bonds attaching the wires to the silicon substrate, the silicon wires grow as a continuation of the substrate crystal lattice, so we get single crystal quality determined by the substrate. I suspect that even though they did not investigate the attachment, they have plain covalent bonds as well.
Thus, it is not unreasonable to speculate that nanotubes could be used in body armor to provide better protection due to the nanotube’s great mechanical properties (I don’t know about “deflect” though).
2. Nanotubes current have no known “healing” effects that I am aware of. Thus, I personally find it unlikely that nanotubes will be used as a medical “healer”. However, nanotube may one day be used as electrical components (circuits/batteries/sensors) in medical devices,
IBM has a method that tags nanotubes with marker molecules than will then self assemble the nanotubes in a manner similar to a biological process. The markers are then stripped away.
carbon nano tube is the material. however in the field of state-of-the-art military tech, ceramic plates offer the best protection today from projectile weapons.
in the field of space, aerogel offer the best thermal protection, if someone came after you with a flame thrower
in the field of electronics, a plasma shield or some kind of electromagnetic field can protect your from being seen by electronics, harmed by radiation, and will stop bullets, fire, and other physical harm soon.
so the best shield there is isn't actually a material, but energy.
as for materials, ceramic plates and aerogel will be sufficient to protect you from most hazards.
and one more ( i couldn’t fit it into the other comment box)
3. Could some solution be mixed into tar, or the blacktop used in roads to make ice and rain “not” stick to it?? therefore eliminating some of the worst driving conditions there are, and as a result less crashes and related deaths occuring.