Effect of Manufactured Nanomaterials on the Body —Especially Carbon-Based Nanomaterials—

Abstract

Although it is very important to characterize manufactured nanomaterials in order to estimate the harmful effect of the nanomaterials, there is little research on the characterization in the world. The characterization of nanomaterials with a well-dispersed state was accompanied by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) project in Japan, and animal exposure studies to well-characterized nanomaterials have been performed. We have reviewed the harmful effect of nanomaterials mainly based on NEDO project. There are no consistent data on cytotoxicity of fullerene in vitro study, but the animal exposure studies including NEDO project showed that fullerene either induced transient inflammation in the lung or no induction. Based on these results, we suggested that fullerene may not have high potentials with inflammation and fibrosis. Single and multi walled carbon nanotube induced cytotoxicity in vitro study and acute inflammation in animal model. Intratracheal instillation study of multi-walled carbon nanotube in NEDO project also induced acute inflammation in lung of rat. These data suggested that carbon nanotube may have potentials to inflammation. However, it is important to examine the chronic effect such as chronic inflammation, fibrosis and cancer in animal study in order to estimate harmful effect of carbon nanotube. Therefore we expect to come out with new data and research on the chronic effect of carbon nanotube in the future.