Nanoparticles

Imagine terrorists that design an aerosol that sprays particles into the air and penetrates your membranes where it alters and damages tissue.  Well, we don't need terrorists to do this:  we're doing it to ourselves with a new class of commercial chemicals called nanoparticles. 

What's so scary about nanoparticles?  These wee critters can diffuse and penetrate easily, almost like the chemical equivalent of gamma rays, and it looks like where they do their most damage is in your arteries.  For example, a 2007 animal study showed that nanoparticles lead to calcification, or hardening, of the arteries. [1] Anything that hardens your arteries is, of course, bad for your health, but it's also bad for your sex life.  You need nice, flexible penile arteries to allow blood into those critical erectile chambers.

Nanoparticles probably do their damage through a variety of routes, but one of the most likely paths is inflammation.  One study showed that alumina nanoparticles increased arterial inflammation and macrophage stickiness, which are leading culprits in the buildup of arterial plaque. [3]  Yet another pathway may be that these particles actually change cell permeability - scary! [4]

Subsequent research has been no more comforting.  One 2009 animal study of titanium dioxide nanoparticles confirmed the ability of these compounds to wreak havoc with your sex life by showing that they actually decrease the all-important endothelial levels of nitric oxide, thus making arteries appear more stiff in the short term as well. [2] 

 So how do you avoid nanoparticles and their potentially negative impact?  Well, it's not as easy as you might hope for:  nanoparticles are in an abundance of household products, including cleaners, sun screens and air fresheners.  That's right - air fresheners.  Your work or school or shopping center may be pumping undetectable nanoparticles into the air.  This is particularly troubling because the nanoparticles in creams, cosmetics and sun screens are much less readily absorbed than those sprayed into the air which easily penetrate the lungs and head into your bloodstream.

Another problematic usage is silver nanoparticles on cutting boards, kitchen appliances, anti-odor socks and so on.  These silver nanoparticles are used commercially, because they kill bacteria.  The problem is that they kill the good and bad indescrimately and, of course, there is concern over the impact to the environment from the runoff.  Interestingly enough, the EPA is starting to regulate silver nanoparticles due to environmental concerns.   

As always, the government is, on all non-silver nanoparticles, once again assuming that a chemical is okay until proven otherwise.  Instead of first requiring that a chemcial be shown reasonably safe before putting it in every consumer product known to man, it is always assumed that the corporate world would never do anything harmful or risky.  As long as people aren't keeling over as it it was nerve poison, the FDA and EPA assume that all is well until decades later when private research begins uncovering the dangers.

So the bottom line is that it would be tough to avoid nanoparticles at this point.  In fact, your only real way to combat this problem is to write your congressman or become a researcher.  Until then, we'll all have to wait and hope for the best.

REFERENCES:

1) FASEB Journal, 2007, 21:744.1, "Biologic Nanoparticles and Arterial Response to Injury"

2) Cardiovascular Toxicology, Published online: 22 December 2009, "Nanoparticle Inhalation Impairs Coronary Microvascular Reactivity via a Local Reactive Oxygen Species-Dependent Mechanism"

3) TOXICOLOGY LETTERS, 2008, 178(3)160-166, "Alumina nanoparticles induce expression of endothelial cell adhesion molecules"

4) Part Fibre Toxicol, 2009 Jan 9, 6:1, "Iron oxide nanoparticles induce human microvascular endothelial cell permeability through reactive oxygen species production and microtubule remodeling"