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The great big question about nanomaterials 纳米材料中存在的问题 MARCH 6, 2015, 12:30 PM EST
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Companiesare using them to makeeverything from snack foods to clothing to sunscreen. The problem? We know verylittle about the long-term effects on our health. 从零食到衣服再到防晒霜，企业都在使用纳米材料。那么这种材料存在什么问题呢？我们对它给健康带来的长期影响知之甚少。
Afew years ago Arturo Keller began spending an awful lot of timeworking with pigskin—spreading things onit, lighting it up, heating it, looking at it under a microscope. He had nobroader porcine predilection. No reason to study the whole hog. But the skin ofpigs held a particular appeal for him because of its similarity to human skin.(And for obvious reasons he can’t work with that.)Assisted by his students, Keller, achemist and environmental scientist at theUniversity of California at Santa Barbara, spread a solution containing amaterial common in cosmetics, sunscreens, and lotions on the pig skins. Thesamples were then exposed to ultraviolet rays—someplaced under a special lamp designed to replicate sunlight and others next to awindow to soak up the real thing. Keller and his team were curious to see howthe light would affect the solution’s main ingredient:nano titanium dioxide.
几年前，阿图罗凯勒开始对猪皮进行大量的研究，比如光照，加热，以及在显微镜下观察。他并不是有多么的喜欢猪，也没有理由去研究整头猪。而猪皮却吸引了他，因为猪皮与人的皮肤相似。（由于众所周知的原因，他不能直接在人体上进行测试，于是只能选择猪的皮肤进行实验。）在加州大学圣芭芭拉分校的化学家兼环境学家凯勒的帮助下，他将一种在大部分化妆品、防晒霜和面霜中里都含有的成分涂抹在猪皮上，把一部分的样品放在紫外线下——一盏模仿太阳光的灯下，将另外的一部分样品放在窗口，让这些样品慢慢吸收。凯勒和他的团队想知道光会对溶液的主要成分——纳米二氧化钛产生怎样的影响。
Kellerfelt it was especially important to understand how the material would behave onskin. Titanium dioxide is chemically inert and has for decades entered humans,often during surgeryand frequently as part of a joint replacement. But shrunkway, way down to nano size, titanium dioxide acts quite differently than itdoes under normal circumstances. In general, things get weird on the nanoscale,which is often not much more than a few atoms stuck together. If the width of ahuman hair were the size of the Empire State Building, a nano particle would bean ant. At that scant size, substances take on new properties.
凯勒认为该材料在皮肤上的反应效果是十分重要的。钛白粉呈惰性并且几十年来一直为人类所用，在手术过程中经常作为替换关节的材料。但它在体积上缩减后，进入了纳米技术的时代。纳米状态的二氧化钛和一般情况下的二氧化钛是完全不同的。一般来说，纳米状态的物质都很奇特，粘在一起的原子只有几个。如果人类头发的宽度就是帝国大厦的宽度的话，纳米粒子就是一只蚂蚁。在如此小的形态时，该物质会呈现出一种新特性。
Nano-size titanium dioxide, inparticular, can sneak into parts of the body that most particles cannot—such as bone marrow, ovaries, lymphnodes, and nerves. It can alsocross the blood-brain barrier or enter cells and destroy genetic material. Theparticles have been found to accumulate in the small intestine, particularly inareas used by our immune system. In 2010 amolecular biologist at UCLA’s School of Public Health began lacing drinking water with nanotitanium dioxide, gave it to mice, and quickly found it was wreaking havoc onthe animals’ chromosomes and DNA, which can lead toincreasedrates of cancer, as well as heart and neurological diseases. TheInternational Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World HealthOrganization) has linked nano titanium dioxide in powder form to cancers,especially when inhaled. The substance is commonly added to products we useeveryday.
特别的是，纳米大小的二氧化钛可以潜入大多数的粒子不能潜入的地方如：骨髓，卵巢，淋巴结和神经。它也可以穿过血脑屏障或进入细胞然后破坏遗传物质。在小肠中已经发现了该颗粒的积累，特别是在我们的免疫系统区。2010年，加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校公共卫生学院的分子生物学家开始把纳米二氧化钛加入到水中给小鼠喝，他们很快发现小鼠的染色体和DNA遭到破坏，从而导致癌症发病率增加，还会导致心脏和神经系统疾病的发生。国际癌症研究机构（世界卫生组织的一部分）已经认定纳米二氧化钛粉末与癌症的形成有关，特别是吸入这些粉末以后。而这种物质经常被添加到我们日常使用的产品中。
The Environmental Working Group, are search organization based in Washington, D.C.,estimates that nano titanium dioxide is in about 10,000 over-the-counterproducts, even food. The particle reflects light well, and studies in 2013found it was a common whitener in foods, showing up in powdered doughnuts madeby Dunkin’ Brands and Donettesmade by (Hostess did not respond to a request for comment. A Dunkin’ spokesperson says its ingredient doesn’tmeet the FDA’s definition of a nanoparticle, but adds, “We are in the process of rolling out a solution to the system thatdoes not contain titanium dioxide.”)
据一个以华盛顿哥伦比亚特区研究组织为基础的环境研究小组估计，纳米二氧化钛大约存在于10000种非处方药品甚至是食品中。这种粒子具有良好的反射光线能力。而且在2013年的研究中，它被发现是食品中常用的增白剂，比如邓肯牌的粉状甜甜圈和女主人牌的甜甜棒。（女主人牌的发言人没有回复采访此问题的请求。邓肯甜甜圈的一位发言人声称他们的甜甜圈并不含有FDA所提及的纳米级别的二氧化钛，并补充道："我们正在研究尝试一个不含有二氧化钛的配方作为解决方案。"）
Overthe past decade the use of nanoparticles has become pervasive, and exposure tothem inescapable. Everyone agrees that the nanomaterials market today is vast,but there is great discrepancy among experts on just how big it really is. Someanalyst reports put the size of the industry in the single-digit billions. TheProject on Emerging Nanotechnologies estimates that it’s $20 billion and that it will double in the next decade. And areport released last year by Global Industry Analysts, a research firm, statesthat the worldwide market for nanotechnology will reach an astounding $3.5trillion by 2020. Likewise, the exact number of nanomaterials that has beencreated is hard to pin down, but it’s probably in thetens of thousands. What’s certain is that these tinythings are out there, in great number, in a lot of the things we buy, eat, andwear.
在过去的十年中，纳米粒子的使用已经十分普遍，接触到它们是不可避免的。所有的人都认同纳米材料目前市场十分广阔，但到底有多么广阔，专家之间的意见存在巨大差异。一些分析师的报告提出，它的产业规模在几十亿左右。新兴的纳米技术项目的估计是两百亿美元，然后它将在未来10年翻倍。根据去年一位来自调研公司的全球行业分析师报告，到2020年纳米技术的全球市场将达到3.5万亿美元。同样，已被创造出的纳米材料的具体数量难以确定，但可能是无以计数的。可以肯定的是，这些微小的物质就在我们身边大量存在着，渗入到了我们的日用品、食品和衣物等各个方面。
Buteven as nanomaterials have proliferated, the scientists who work with them andthe companies that use them in their products have begun to raise questionsabout their safety, and to realize that we are still in the early stages ofunderstanding the consequences of our exposure. And while there has been a verypublic debate about the risk of genetically modified organisms in food, thequestion of nanomaterials has largely stayed out of the mainstream.
但即使是纳米材料层出不穷，该领域的科学家和在产品中使用纳米技术的公司已经开始对其安全性提出质疑，并且也意识到，对“纳米材料会对人类产生怎样的后果”这个问题，我们仍然处在了解的初级阶段。虽然已经有了关于食品中的转基因生物风险的公开辩论，但是大部分有关纳米材料的问题却还在主流讨论热点之外。
This story is from the March 15, 2015 issue of Fortune. 选自2015年3月15日的《财富》。
翻译by tell 校对by gabriellaz 校对by 小郭 树屋字幕组-文翻组 翻译仅供学习交流，严禁用于商业用途
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发表于 2015-9-17 14:18:54
