A broad array of consumer and medical products employ billionths-of-a-meter scale silver particles as embedded disinfectants. A study now suggests that if those nanoparticles get loose and into the body, they might wreak havoc with the human immune system. Documented effects occurred at very low concentrations — levels as minute as parts per trillion or even, sometimes, one-thousandth that much (i.e. parts per quadrillion).
Perturbing immunity could, of course, be very bad.
(via Robot Wisdom)
December 5, 2008 at 10:28 pm
While that’s bad enough, the problem is worse than just immune system effects. We are porous to many things on the nano-scale and it is not yet known what would happen in our bodies with a lot of nano-materials, other than most likely nothing good. http://science.slashdot.org/science/04/03/29/0328251.shtml?tid=134&tid=191