Excessive consumption of nanomaterials can be toxic to health

Nanomaterials are found in food additives and medicinal tablet excipients. While in Europe and the United States there is strict regulation, in Mexico companies are not obliged to comply. Nanomaterials in electronic devices, clothing, and sporting goods do not come off; they affect those who manufacture them.

There are nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, gold, silver, tin, and carbon, which measure between one and 100 nanometers, with which different industrial products are made; they are very useful for producing and transporting drugs, as well as food additives, which when consumed orally damage the digestive tract and colon, warned Yolanda Irasema Chirino López, a researcher at the Faculty of Higher Studies (FES) Iztacala of the UNAM.

Humans are in contact with various products that contain them, such as cell phones and touch screens of tablet and computer devices; synthetic textiles in clothing, wrappings, and additives in industrialized foods, and the excipients of some medicines, especially tablets.

Although they are very useful, we should be careful with their exposure or exaggerated use, explained the specialist, since "the way they can affect us is not because we use the cell phone, since the particles do not come off the screen. The risk of exposure is for the personnel who work in the manufacture of these devices, who inhale the materials which, being of nanometric size, can reach very deep areas of the lungs and cause inflammatory processes".

Those who work several hours a day and for years in the manufacture of these devices have chronic contact with them; if the person has cancer, it can exacerbate the number of tumors, as shown by some laboratory experiments carried out on mouse models at the university.

Chirino López pointed out: "while in Europe and the United States there is strict regulation and it is known what type of packaging contains nanomaterials, in Mexico, we do not know, because the regulation does not oblige companies to declare if they are using any type of nanomaterial in the packaging or as a food additive".

Another risk is when we consume them orally when particles detach from some plastic food wrappers, which contain silver nanoparticles for their antibacterial properties to prevent contamination of the product, but when we ingest them we eat those nanoparticles.

Or, by directly ingesting drug tablets with excipients, in foods such as tortillas, packaged bread, and food supplements that also contain them, the digestive tract and colon are damaged; there are reports that they increase the number of cancer tumors, and are especially harmful in people previously susceptible, with colitis, gastritis and other intestinal diseases.

In the laboratory, food-grade titanium dioxide is studied, a compound allowed in an Official Mexican Standard to make packaged tortillas, as well as candies and candied chocolates, which is described on the label, but is ingested and deposited in our body when consuming these foods. An experiment with rodents showed that when ingesting titanium dioxide nanoparticles, the animals presented exacerbation of tumors when they previously suffered from cancer.

As for cell lines, Chirino López and her collaborators demonstrated that industrial-grade titanium nanofibers make lung cancer cells more resistant to anticancer drugs. Regarding carbon nanotubes, which are used to make lightweight materials for sports use, such as racquets, tennis rackets, or sports clothing, the potential damage is for the manufacturers who inhale the nanoparticles, and not for the users, said the university professor.

Nanofibers are especially toxic, as they simulate fibrous forms such as asbestos, a very toxic material; they cause considerable inflammation in the lungs. "It is not only the chemical composition of the nanoparticle that is important, but also its shape. Fibrous shapes are more harmful than spherical ones."

For the environment it represents an important risk because diverse devices and materials end up in municipal dumps where they contaminate the soil, the pollution passes into the aquifers that are used in agriculture. The damage is not only for humans. She suggested maintaining balance in consumption and trying to eat natural, homemade, and little processed food.