Trojan Horses

I attended a lecture recently by Fabienne Schwab on the effects of diuron and carbon nanotubes (CNT) to algae. Diuron partitions to a great extent to the CNTs. Depending on your perspective, this can be beneficial or detrimental. As a remedial technology, it has been suggested that the CNTs (and other carbon nanoparticles) can help to remove contaminants through sorption or by chemically modifying the contaminants. From a toxicological perspective, however, the sorption mechanism may cause further problems by concentrating the toxic contaminants. The term Schwab used to describe the most concerning problem with this is that these CNTs can act like a Trojan Horse and deliver highly concentrated environmental toxicants (like diuron) to an organism - this is not good. The term Trojan Horse is also being used by the medical community where the nanoparticles are used to deliver medicine to targeted areas - this is good. In my opinion, all of these perspectives (and more, for example, the question of how fate and transport is affected needs to be addressed) are needed to help manage uses of nanotechnology, particularly when there is the potential for releases into the environment.

Interesting Articles:

• Rajan, C.S. 2011. Nanotechnology in Groundwater Remediation. International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, 2(3):
  
• Li, X., Zhao, H., Quan, X., Chen, S., Zhang, Y., and H. Yu. 2011. Adsorption of Ionizable organic contaminants on multi-walled carbon nanotubes with different oxygen contents. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 186(1): 407-415.