by Joe Buchman Most of us are familiar with the concept of “side effects.” This is when something that is designed to be helpful ends up having some harm that goes along with it. For …
toxicity
How Natural Organic Matter May Change How Nanoparticles Affect Bacteria
by Arielle Mensch Almost 4 years ago now (wow I’m getting old) I wrote a blog post about the Invisible Remnants of Dead Stuff Hiding in the Water called natural organic matter, or NOM. Well, …
Nanoparticles can stick to bacteria, but does more nanoparticle sticking mean more toxicity?
by Joe Buchman Have bacteria ever made you sick? If you answer no I’m not going to believe you. When most of us think about bacteria, we’re reminded of how miserable we were the last …
Thus Spake Paracelsus*
by Joel Pedersen The Swiss Renaissance physician, alchemist and founder of toxicology Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus (!) von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus (Figure 1), said it well: “All substances are poisons; there is none …
Why do Scientists Care about Bacterial Replication?
by Joe Buchman edited by Arielle Mensch Did you know that under the right conditions, bacteria can divide every 20 minutes?1 (That’s how bacteria reproduce – one cell splits into two.) That means that 10 …
Adrift in a Sea of Chemicals, Toxicology Throws Us a Line
by Becky Curtis edited by Alicia McGeachy and Arielle Mensch How do we stay safe in a world full of chemicals? Everywhere we look, we find chemistry – both natural and synthetic – at work …
Using Gene Expression to Learn About Nanoparticle Toxicity
by Autumn Qiu What happens to cells when they come into contact with nanoparticles? Researchers in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology are trying to answer this question in a lot of different ways. The effect …
Charge and Gold Nanoparticle Toxicity
by Jared Bozich This post is the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of public-friendly summaries describing research articles that have been published by members of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. Jared Bozich, …
Dumping Nanoparticles into a Fjord: How to Think About the Potential Environmental Impacts
by Ian Gunsolus Nanoparticles and the Environment Series, Part II (click here for Part I) Let’s dive in to a real-world nanotechnology problem raised by one of our readers: should waste composed of nanoparticles, let’s …
Nano Contaminants: How Nanoparticles Get Into the Environment
by Sam Lohse Nanoparticles and the Environment Series, Part I (click here for part II) More than a year ago on this site, I talked to you about how nanoparticles were already all around us, …