Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Particles are suspected to play a part in pathologies like Alzheimer
s disease,
'
Parkinson
s disease, autism and other pathologies involving the brain. We have no
evidence available from our laboratory and the only thing we can say is that further
research is necessary to dispel all doubts.
More than once we found particulate matter in the seminal fluid, in most cases
samples from soldiers repatriated from missions in war theatres. That undue pres-
ence can be the cause of male sterility and of a condition called “Burning Semen
Disease” involving the carrier
'
s female sexual partner. In that case, after unprotected
sexual intercourse the woman develops bleeding, painful sores in her vaginal
channel tissue, and those sores cannot be successfully treated either surgically or
pharmacologically. Male sterility had been already observed long ago in workers of
some factories, but no satisfactory explanation had ever been given to the phenom-
enon. The excess of cases of endometriosis in the inhabitants of Taranto, an Italian
town particularly polluted by the largest steelworks in Europe, could also find a
reasonable answer as to their origin. We add that particles can be artificially removed
from the seminal fluid and the couple can resort to assisted reproduction techniques.
Of course, this can be done only if the particular condition is known.
We also proved that the passage of particles from mother to fetus is possible, a
situation that can give rise to miscarriages when the particulate matter gets to the
embryo at an early stage of gestation. When the phenomenon occurs later, these
foreign bodies can induce damage compatible with life and the result can be a
malformed child.
One of the tasks of the nanopathologists is tracing the exposure to pollutants the
patient underwent. So, they must sift through the environment the subject lives or
has lived in, including food and drugs. A focused anamnestic work is conducted
with the fundamental aid of the patient and, if the collaboration works, it is not rare
that the source of pollution can be identified and, if still present, eliminated from the
patient
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s life. Such a detective work is generally far from quick and far from simple,
but the combination of the chemical composition of the particles, their size and their
shape is often a sort of fingerprint left by a specific type of pollution.
The current Toxicology tests are not always suitable to explain the effects of new
pollutants, and that is particularly true with micro- and nanoparticles. The basic
concept that Toxicology fails to consider is the nature of particulate matter. Of
course particles are made of atoms, each of which can exert its own characteristic
effect on the organism, but limiting oneself to just taking into account those effects
is in most cases a simplistic approach and a misleading one.
What is very important to understand the consequence that can derive from
particles present in the organism is their being foreign bodies, and that is largely
independent of their elemental composition. Also size and shape influence their
behavior, both being determining factors for particle mobility. And the surface/
volume ratio of each particle is also of the utmost importance, as the reactivity
increases with the increase of the ratio, a property amply exploited by nanotech-
nologists. A further aspect to be considered is the ability of particles below a certain
size to enter cell nuclei and interfere with the DNA, with organelles, with proteins,
etc. The chemical composition of particles becomes important when corrosion
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