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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Toxicology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
How Meaningful are the Results of Nanotoxicity Studies in the Absence of Adequate Material Characterization?
DuPont Haskell Global Centers for Health and Environmental Sciences, Newark, Delaware
1 For correspondence via E-mail: david.b.warheit@usa.dupont.com.
Received November 6, 2007; accepted November 6, 2007
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For the very few people who may not have an understanding of nanotechnology, here is a quick overview. Nanotechnology is an emerging multidisciplinary technology that involves the synthesis of molecules in the nanoscale (i.e., 10–9 m) size range. The origin of the term "nanotechnology" is derived from the Greek word "nano," meaning "dwarf." From a chemistry and material science perspective, the development of new products using nanomaterials is exciting because, for a given particle-type, as one moves down the nanoscale (i.e., as the particle size is decreased within the nanoscale range), fundamental physical and chemical properties appear to change—often yielding completely new and different physical/chemical properties.
For example, titanium dioxide particle-types, lose their white color and become colorless at decreasing size ranges < 50 nm. Other particle-types, known for electrical insulating properties, may become conductive at the nanoscale; or insoluble substances can become more
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