TOXICITY OF CARBON NANOTUBES - Carbon Nanotubes: From Bench Chemistry to Promising Biomedical Applications - page 237

8.4 CONCLUSION

Even though in the last decade carbon nanotubes have shown exquisite
properties and encouraging results, they still present a fundamental
aspect that has limited their widespread applications: none among their
characteristics in term of structure, size and composition can be ascertained
with unquestionable certainty. Manufactured samples present huge
differences and their further modiication, through chemical procedures,
enhances their diversity. Therefore, it becomes extremely important to
identify the dependence from a particular property, in order to obtain more
reproducible results. It is imperative to obtain a clear understanding of what
really happens to nanoparticles months and years after their release, since
some encouraging evidences are not exhaustive in guaranteeing complete
innocuous behaviour. For all these very important reasons, further studies
are required to investigate whether CNTs can be widely used for their useful
characteristics, and their impact on both health and environment can be
monitored in a meticulous and completely safe manner.

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