Masses of products—from cosmetics to clothing—now contain nanoparticles, to kill microbes, lengthen shelf life or provide other wonderful properties. But new research from MIT and Harvard suggests they could also be damaging your DNA.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology have found that that both silver and zinc oxide nanoparticles appear to cause substantial damage to DNA. The scientists used high-speed screening technology to analyze progressive DNA damage following exposure to the particles, allowing them to study the effects at a much higher rate and scale than ever before.
The research, published in ACS Nano, consider nanpoarticles made of silver, zinc oxide, iron oxide, cerium oxide, and silicon dioxide. Zinc oxide and silver produced the greatest DNA damage, and at a concentration of 10 micrograms per milliliter they generated a large number of single-stranded DNA breaks.