Exotic Nanomaterials Claimed Their First Major Workplace Injury

Tens of thousands of people may have been unknowingly exposed to an exotic array of nanomaterials in the workplace over the last decade. Now a US worker is the first fully documented human casualty of the booming $20 billion+ nanotech industry.

The 26-year-old chemist didn’t know she was using nickel nanoparticle powder at a work. Nano means really, really small. How many nanoparticles would fit on the head of a pin? Answer: 100 million. A strand of DNA is Godzillian in size by comparison.

There is no requirement to label nano stuff as nano even though these extraordinarily small things have extraordinary properties which makes them useful and valuable. Nor are there nano-specific regulations about how to safely handle many of them.

Within a week of simply measuring out the one or two grams of powder, the chemist’s throat became congested, her nose dripped and face became flushed. Then her skin began to react to her earrings and belt buckle. Her symptoms continued even after she stopped working with the material and moved to another floor. Once outside her workplace the symptoms improved.

“She can never work inside that building again,” said Dr. Shane Journeay, a medical doctor and nanotoxicologist at the University of Toronto. Journeay coauthored the case study with Dr Rose Goldman of the Harvard School of Public Health. It was just published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

“This is the first well-documented case of a worker handling nanoparticles in a US manufacturing facility developing serious health effects,” Journeay told Motherboard.

“Is this the tip of the iceberg?” asked Journeay, who specializes in occupational health and safety.

Journeay has received many emails from medical workers at occupational health and safety clinics who have seen similar cases. “They don’t know what to do about it.”

The use of nanomaterials has exploded. They’re in bowling balls, eye shadow, socks, food wrappers, sunscreen, paints, mouthwash, vitamin supplements and more—at least 1,880 products, according to a list compiled by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnology.

“The government doesn’t know how many products use nanomaterials,” said Vincent, Executive Director of the NanoBusiness Commercialization Association.

“There’s no way to know how many people work with nanomaterials,” Vincent said.

The National Science Foundation has estimated that by 2020 nanotech jobs will employ six million people, two million of them in the US.

Bleeding-edge science just 10 or 15 years ago, today nearly every industry is into nano.  The chemical, cosmetics, oil and gas, semi-conductor, medical products, aerospace, sporting goods, textile and other industries all do nano now, he said.

What makes it a big deal, and potentially so dangerous, is that ordinary stuff like nickel or titanium have extraordinary properties at the nano scale. They have very different physical and chemical properties than the same material at even the micro size. And there are many different types of nanomaterials, including fullerenes (aka buckyballs), quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, and all manner of nanoparticles.

“It’s impossible to test every nano product for its safety,” said Journeay.

Many aren’t required to be tested because nanoscale nickel, titanium dioxide, and many other nanomaterials have the same molecular structure at the nano and megascale. Even though the sought-after properties of nano nickel or titanium may be wildly different than when they’re pea-sized, they are considered the same by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal nano regulator.

There are no special requirements for handling these materials in the workplace, said Lynn Bergeson, of Bergeson and Campbell PC, a Washington DC law firm specializing in nano and regulatory compliance.

Since 2008 the EPA does require the more exotic nanomaterials like fullerenes, quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes to go through its New Chemical Review process. “Worker exposure to these materials is EPA’s primary concern and they mandate what level of protection is required at the workplace,” Bergeson said in an interview.

However Journeay says there is hardly any data on the impacts on human health for a wide range of nano materials currently in use. There are only two studies looking at the possible health implications of nano nickel, both of which found it more toxic than standard-size nickel, he said.

“Workers are using these materials, and the health effects are completely unknown,” Journeay said.

And it is far from clear what appropriate protection equipment should be used. Research is still underway by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to figure this out.

Because of nanomaterials’ novel properties, some of the basics of toxicology don’t apply and testing methods have to be revised. And few people are trained to work in nanotoxicology. It makes doing health and safety studies very difficult, and that’s one reason there is so little reliable data, said Journeay. “We’re flying without any checks and balances.”