- “ ‘These are designed to slice the cell membrane, to rip the membrane up and
eliminate the contents’, explains James Hedrick, advanced organic materials
scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center. ‘It’s kind of like the way a virus
would work – a virus drills a pore, empties the contents and hijacks it. This is
drilling in little holes, and all the contents leak out.” - “While the technology sounds promising, it has yet to be tested on humans. IBM
declares that the nanoparticles harmlessly degrade into an innocuous
byproduct...a great deal of testing needs to be done to make sure that the
nanoparticles only attack the cells of the organisms they are intended to attack. - The correct title for this article should be “Nanoplastic Particles” since this is a
synthetic nanoparticle. Updates since 2011 seem elusive.
Kolpin, D., Furlong, E., Meyer, M., et al. (2002). Pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other
organic wastewater contaminants in US Streams, 1999-2000; a national reconnaissance.
Environmental Science and Technology. 36(6). pg. 1202-11.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=usgsstaffpub
Kostich, M. S., Batt, A. L. and Lazorchak, J. M. (2014). Concentration of prioritized
pharmaceuticals in effluents from 50 large wastewater treatment plants in the US and
implications for risk estimation. Environmental Pollution. 184. Pg. 354-359.
http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-
09/documents/50_large_wwtp_effluent.pdf
- “The primary route of APIs into surface waters is believed to be excretion by
patients into wastewater collection systems...Over 1000 APIs are approved for
use in the US (US Food and Drug Administration, 2009), but most studies
examining environmental occurrence only report concentrations of a handful of
analytes.” - “Little or no measured concentration data are available for a number of widely
prescribed APIs (Kostich et al, 2010).” - “Here we report the measured concentrations of 56 APIs and 7 API metabolites
in effluent samples from fifty very large (15 to 660 MGD) wastewater treatment
plants (WWTPs) located across the US.” - “Antibiotic concentrations may inhibit the growth of some naturally occurring
beneficial microbes, and may facilitate early steps in the acquisition of clinically
significant resistance. These conclusions can be tentatively extended to all
prescription pharmaceuticals in current use.”
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