Graphene Toxicity - Page 2

Researchers from Empa and the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) in Fribourg have conducted studies on a 3D lung model to examine the behavior of graphene and graphene-like materials once they have been inhaled.

The lung model at Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI)

Thanks to the 3-D lung model, the researchers have succeeded in simulating the actual conditions at the blood-air barrier and the impact of graphene on the lung tissue as realistically as possible without any tests on animals or humans. It is a cell model representing the lung alveoli. Conventional in vitro tests work with cell cultures from just one cell type the newly established lung model, on the other hand, bears three different cell types, which simulate the conditions inside the lung, namely alveolar epithelial cells and two kinds of immune cells macrophages and dendritic cells.

A team of Korean researchers recently conducted an inhalation toxicology study of graphene, as much questions have been raised on graphene's potential health and safety risks.

The study was done using a nose-only inhalation system for 28 days (6 h/day and 5 days/week) with male Sprague-Dawley rats that were then allowed to recover for 1-, 28-, and 90-day post-exposure period. Animals were separated into 4 groups (control, low, moderate, and high) with 15 male rats (5 rats per time point) in each group.

A recent study performed at Rice University explored the toxicity of different nanomaterials. A major difficulty in assessing nanomaterial toxicity is that there are many different varieties of nanomaterials and it is too costly to test all of them using traditional methods. The goal of the study was to develop a low-cost, high-throughput method to solve this problem.

The scientists achieved this goal by testing nanomaterials on a worm called Nematode C. Elegans. They designed assays that can test hundreds of nanomaterials in a week. These assays test the effects of each nanomaterial on thousands of worms. The material cost for each assay is only about 50 cents. As a demonstration, they applied their technology to test 20 nanomaterials and found that most of them showed some degree of toxicity. This method can serve effectively as a rapid initial screen to prioritize a few nanomaterials for more expensive, dedicated toxicology testing.

The U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a $1.2m grant for the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) to extend a collaborative research program focused on graphene-based nanomaterials.

The ARA stated that the research will be focused primarily on the safety and toxicity of graphene and its impact on public health. This project will be a collaborative effort between the ARA and the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), the FDA's primary research facility. Four research universities will also take part in the research.

Researchers from UC Riverside discovered that graphene oxide nanoparticles are very mobile in lakes or streams - which means that they can cause negative environmental and health impacts. It turns out that in surface waters (where there is more organic material and less hardness), GO particles remain stable. But in groundwater, they tend to become less stable.

The researchers say that it is important to continue and study what happens when graphene materials get into the ground or water. They say that their lab is one of the few labs in the US that studies the environmental impact of graphene oxide.

Sweden's Department of Energy and Environment studied the available information on graphene, and came up with the conclusion that the new material may have potentially adverse environmental and health risks. Graphene could exert a considerable toxicity and it is also suggested that graphene is both persistent and hydrophobic (graphene is a very effective water repellent).

There are still many risk-related knowledge gaps to be filled, according to the researchers as "Considerable" emissions of graphene from electronic devices and composites are possible in the future.