Therefore, these materials can be used as carriers for drugs, which will allow them to enter tissues that are difficult to access
Research at Purdue University claims that synthetic carbon compounds known as "fullerenes" have the ability to accumulate in living tissues, and are also capable of breaking down when exposed to sunlight, so their environmental hazards are reduced.
Fullerenes could have future products and applications ranging from transporting drugs to cure cancer, reinforced coatings and military weapons, chemical sensors and hydrogen storage technologies to fuel cell batteries for cars.
"Due to their number of possible applications, it is important to study how fullerenes react in the environment and what their environmental effects might be," says Chad Jafvert, a professor of civil engineering at the university.
The researchers mixed fullerenes in a solution of water and octanol, a solution that simulates properties similar to adipose tissue. The researchers were the first to show how the fullerenes behave in environments of water, soil and fatty tissues of fish.
The findings show that fullerenes are more likely to penetrate fatty tissue than the banned pesticide DDT. However, while the substance DDT is toxic to bees, no scientific documentation has been found that the fullerenes are toxic, says the researcher.
"This study demonstrates our need for a better understanding of the behavior of materials in the environment," he claims. "Our findings show that the fullerenes may be digested by fish and other animals, and possibly accumulate in them to toxic levels. These findings only describe their ability to accumulate in the body. However, it is possible that they may break down in the environment itself or inside the animal." The researchers still do not know if these substances actually break down in the environment or in the body, facts that could reduce the chance of their accumulation in fatty tissues.
"For example, we do not accumulate sugars because we digest them, but we do accumulate other substances that we do not digest," says the researcher. "If we have the ability to digest fullerenes, they will not accumulate in our body."
The researchers were able to measure the relative tendency of the fullerenes to dissolve in water and lipids. "Bottom line, if the fullerenes tend to dissolve better in octanol than in water they will probably also dissolve better in adipose tissue than in water," says the lead researcher.
Also, the researchers are examining whether solar radiation breaks down the fullerenes and similar materials known as carbon nanotubes, which are used in diverse industrial applications. "We have to study how these substances react in the environment," explains the researcher. "Do they break up at all? What are their breakdown products? So far we have learned that fullerenes absorb light and react to solar radiation. This is an important advantage, because it implies that the materials will not remain durable for a long time in the environment and thus the concentration of exposure to them will decrease - a result that will reduce the possible toxicity due to their use."
The fullerenes (also called buckminsterfullerenes and buckyballs) named after the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, who designed the geodesic dome, are football-like compounds made of only sixty carbon atoms. Fullerenes have a width of about one nanometer which is the cumulative length of ten atoms.
The researchers accurately determined the solubility of the fullerenes in water and showed that the molecules arrange themselves in clusters (clusters) - a result that makes the efforts to understand their behavior in the environment more complex.
"For the most part, fullerenes are not found in water due to their low solubility in it, but the same can be said for DDT," explains the lead researcher. "DDT is found in sediments in the environment, so it can be assumed that the fullerenes will also find their end there. That is, there is a probability that marine organisms, such as worms that feed on sediments, will accumulate the fullerenes in their bodies, unless the fullerenes are first broken down in the environment."
