Tag Archives: The Georgia Straight

Misunderstanding the data or a failure to research? Georgia Straight article about nanoparticles

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It’s good to see articles about nanotechnology. The recent, Tiny nanoparticles could be a big problem, article written by Alex Roslin for the Georgia Straight (July 21, 2011 online or July 21-28, 2011 paper edition) is the first I’ve seen on that topic in that particular newspaper. Unfortunately, there are  some curious bits of information included in the article, which render it, in my opinion, difficult to trust.

I do agree with Roslin that nanoparticles/nanomaterials could constitute a danger and there are a number of studies which indicate that, at the least, extreme caution in a number of cases should be taken if we choose to proceed with developing nanotechnology-enabled products.

One of my difficulties with the article is the information that has been left out. (Perhaps Roslin didn’t have time to properly research?) At the time (2009) I did read with much concern the reports Roslin mentions about the Chinese workers who were injured and/or died after working with nanomaterials. As Roslin points out,

Nanotech already appears to be affecting people’s health. In 2009, two Chinese factory workers died and another five were seriously injured in a plant that made paint containing nanoparticles.

The seven young female workers developed lung disease and rashes on their face and arms. Nanoparticles were found deep in the workers’ lungs.

“These cases arouse concern that long-term exposure to some nanoparticles without protective measures may be related to serious damage to human lungs,” wrote Chinese medical researchers in a 2009 study on the incident in the European Respiratory Journal.

Left undescribed by Roslin are the working conditions; the affected people were working in an unventilated room. From the European Respiratory Journal article (ERJ September 1, 2009 vol. 34 no. 3 559-567, free access), Exposure to nanoparticles is related to pleural effusion, pulmonary fibrosis and granuloma,

A survey of the patients’ workplace was conducted. It measures ∼70 m2, has one door, no windows and one machine which is used to air spray materials, heat and dry boards. This machine has three atomising spray nozzles and one gas exhauster (a ventilation unit), which broke 5 months before the occurrence of the disease. The paste material used is an ivory white soft coating mixture of polyacrylic ester.

Eight workers (seven female and one male) were divided into two equal groups each working 8–12 h shifts. Using a spoon, the workers took the above coating material (room temperature) to the open-bottom pan of the machine, which automatically air-sprayed the coating material at the pressure of 100–120 Kpa onto polystyrene (PS) boards (organic glass), which can then be used in the printing and decorating industry. The PS board was heated and dried at 75–100°C, and the smoke produced in the process was cleared by the gas exhauster. In total, 6 kg of coating material was typically used each day. The PS board sizes varied from 0.5–1 m2 and ∼5,000 m2 were handled each workday. The workers had several tasks in the process including loading the soft coating material in the machine, as well as clipping, heating and handling the PS board. Each worker participated in all parts of this process.

Accumulated dust particles were found at the intake of the gas exhauster. During the 5 months preceding illness the door of the workspace was kept closed due to cold outdoor temperatures. The workers were all peasants near the factory, and had no knowledge of industrial hygiene and possible toxicity from the materials they worked with. The only personal protective equipment used on an occasional basis was cotton gauze masks. According to the patients, there were often some flocculi produced during air spraying, which caused itching on their faces and arms. It is estimated that the airflow or turnover rates of indoor air would be very slow, or quiescent due to the lack of windows and the closed door. [emphases mine]

Here’s the full text from the researchers’ conclusion,

In conclusion, these cases arouse concern that long-term exposure to some nanoparticles without protective measures may be related to serious damage to human lungs. It is impossible to remove nanoparticles that have penetrated the cell and lodged in the cytoplasm and caryoplasm of pulmonary epithelial cells, or that have aggregated around the red blood cell membrane. Effective protective methods appear to be extremely important in terms of protecting exposed workers from illness caused by nanoparticles.

There is no question that serious issues about occupational health and safety with regards to nanomaterials were raised. But, we work with dangerous and hazardous materials all the time; precautions are necessary whether you’re working with hydrochloric acid or engineered nanoparticles. (There are naturally occurring nanoparticles too.)

Dr. Andrew Maynard (at the time he was the Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, today he is the Director of the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center) on his 2020 Science blog wrote a number of posts dated Aug. 18, 2009 about this tragic industrial incident, including this one where he culled comments from six other researchers noting some of the difficulties the Chinese researchers experienced running a clinical study after the fact.

The material on silver nanoparticles and concerns about their use in consumer products and possible toxic consequences with their eventual appearance in the water supply seem unexceptionable to me. (Note:  I haven’t drilled down into the material and the writer cites studies unknown to me but they parallel information I’ve seen elsewhere).

The material on titanium dioxide as being asbestos-like was new to me, the only nanomaterial I’d previously heard described as being similar to asbestos is the long carbon nanotube. I am surprised Roslin didn’t mention that occupational health and safety research which is also quite disturbing, it’s especially surprising since Roslin does mention carbon nanotubes later in the article.

There is a Canadian expert, Dr. Claude Ostiguy, who consults internationally on the topic of nanotechnology and occupational health and safety. I wonder why he wasn’t consulted. (Note: He testified before Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Health meeting in June 2010 on this topic. You can find more about this in my June 23, 2011 posting, Nanomaterials, toxicity, and Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.)

Quoted quite liberally throughout the article is researcher, Dr.Robert Schiestl (professor of pathology and radiation oncology at the University of California at Los Angeles [UCLA]). This particular passage referencing Schiestl is a little disconcerting,

Schiestl said nanoparticles could also be helping to fuel a rise in the rates of some cancers. He wouldn’t make a link with any specific kind of cancer, but data from the U.S. National Cancer Institute show that kidney and renal-pelvis cancer rates rose 24 percent between 2000 and 2007 in the U.S., while the rates for melanoma of the skin went up 29 percent and thyroid cancer rose 54 percent.

Since Schiestl isn’t linking the nanoparticles to any specific cancers, why mention those statistics? Using that kind of logic I could theorize that the increase in the number and use of cell phones (mobiles) may have something to do with these cancers. Perhaps organic food has caused this increase? You see the problem?

As for the number of nanotechnology-enabled products in use, I’m not sure why Roslin chose to cite the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies’ inventory which is not scrutinized, i. e., anyone can register any product as nanotechnology-enabled. The writer also mentioned a Canadian inventory listing over 1600 products  cited in an ETC Group report, The Big Downturn? Nanogeopolitics,

Has anyone ever seen this inventory? I’ve been chasing it for years and the only time the Canadian government reports on this inventory is in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report (cited by the ETC Group [no. 79 in their list of references] and noted in both my Feb. 1, 2011 posting and my April 12, 2010 posting). Here’s the OECD report, if you’d like to see it for yourself. The top three questions I keep asking myself is where is the report/inventory, how did they determine their terms of reference, and why don’t Canadian taxpayers have easy access to it? I’d best return to my main topic.

As for the material Roslin offers about nanosunscreens I was surprised given the tenor of the article to see that the Environmental Working Group (EWG) was listed as an information source since they recommend mineral sunscreens containing nanoscale ingredients such as titanium dioxide and/or zinc oxide as preferable to sunscreens containing hormone disruptors.  From the EWG page on sunscreens and nanomaterials,

Sunscreen makers offer mineral and non-mineral formulations, as well as products that combine both mineral and non-mineral active ingredients. Mineral formulations incorporate zinc oxide or titanium dioxide in nano- and micro-sized particles that can be toxic if they penetrate the skin. Most studies show that these ingredients do not penetrate through skin to the bloodstream, but research continues. These constitute one in five sunscreens on the market in 2010 and offer strong UVA protection that is rare in non-mineral sunscreens.

The most common ingredients in non-mineral sunscreens are oxybenzone, octisalate, octinoxate, and avobenzone found in 65, 58, 57, and 56 percent of all non-mineral sunscreens on the market, respectively. The most common, oxybenzone, can trigger allergic reactions, is a potential hormone disruptor and penetrates the skin in relatively large amounts. Some experts caution that it should not be used on children. Three of every five sunscreens rated by EWG are non-mineral, and one in five sunscreens combines both mineral and non-mineral active ingredients.

EWG reviewed the scientific literature on hazards and efficacy (UVB and UVA protection) for all active ingredients approved in the U.S. Though no ingredient is without hazard or perfectly effective, on balance our ratings tend to favor mineral sunscreens because of their low capacity to penetrate the skin and the superior UVA protection they offer. [emphasis mine]

(I did find some information (very little) about Health Canada and sunscreens which I discuss in June 3, 2011 posting [if you’re impatient, scroll down about 1/2 way].)

There was some mention of Health Canada in Roslin’s article but no mention of last year’s public consultation, although to be fair, it seemed a clandestine operation. (My latest update on the Health Canada public consultation about a definition for nanomaterials is May 27, 2011.)

I find some aspects of the article puzzling as Roslin is an award-winning investigative reporter. From the kitco bio page,

Alex Roslin is a leading Canadian investigative journalist and active trader based in Montreal. He has won a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative reporting and is a five-time nominee for investigative and writing prizes from the CAJ and the National Magazine Awards. He has worked on major investigations for Canada’s premier investigative television program, the fifth estate, and the CBC’s Disclosure program. His writing has appeared in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, The Financial Post, Toronto Star and Montreal Gazette. He regularly writes about investing for The Montreal Gazette.

I notice there’s no mention of writing in either science or health matters so I imagine this is an early stage piece in this aspect of Roslin’s career, which may explain some of the leaps in logic and misleading information. Happily, I did learn a few things from reading the article and while I don’t trust much of the information in it, I will investigate further as time permits.

In general, I found the tenor of the article more alarmist than informational and I’m sorry about that as I would like to see more information being shared and, ultimately, public discussion in Canada about nanotechnology and other emerging technologies.

See the Voice: Visible Verse celebrates its 10th anniversary

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Local poet, Heather Haley is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her video poetry festival tonight and tomorrow, Nov. 19 – 20, 2010 at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinemathèque film theatre (1131 Howe St., Vancouver, Canada). There are two nights of video poetry. The first half of the evening features popular pieces from past showings and the second half of the evening includes a live poetry performance and this year’s entries. Saturday, November 20, 2010, a free panel discussion about poetry and making the voice visible is being presented at 4 pm.

Writer Mark Harris has written an article about Heather and the festival for the Georgia Straight newspaper,

Southern B.C. is one of the most creative corners of Canada, but without a guide you’d never know it. Filmmakers give the cold shoulder to animators, novelists stare through playwrights, and so on. Artists in different disciplines don’t hang out at the same bars, and they rarely attend each other’s parties. In the Lower Mainland, the introspection upon which all creativity depends extends to the social scene as well.

This probably explains why Quebec-born, Bowen Island–based poet-curator Heather Haley discovered the hybrid discipline of video poetry while living abroad. In Vancouver to host the 10th-anniversary edition of Visible Verse at the Pacific Cinémathèque (1131 Howe Street) on Friday and Saturday (November 19 and 20), Haley explained to the Georgia Straight how she discovered her unusual vocation.

“I lived in Los Angeles for many years,” she said while sipping tea on Davie Street. “I was going to be a rock star,” she added, laughing.

You can find the rest of the article here.

Vancouver Art Gallery show: The Modern Woman and Rennie Collection show: Richard Jackson resonate in unexpected ways

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Does the artist’s (visual, literary, musical, theatrical, etc.) personal life matter when you’re experiencing their art? It’s a question that arose in Lucas Nightingale’s response to Robin Laurence’s June 7, 2010 Georgia Straight visual arts review in his June 24, 2010 letter to the editor. The show in question was  the Vancouver Art Gallery’s big summer exhibition, The Modern Woman: Drawings by Dégas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and other Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. Laurence in her critique noted,

“I paint with my prick.” So claimed Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Asked what motivated his representations of plump, rosy-cheeked young women, he’s also reputed to have said his art was all about tits and ass. As for Edgar Degas—the perennial bachelor, anti-Semite, and misogynist—he said he wanted to view women in intimate settings, as if he were looking at them “through a keyhole”. That reads a lot like voyeurism, especially in light of his drawings and paintings of naked women drying themselves off after a bath, seemingly unaware of the viewer. Then there’s the aristocratic Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who hung out with and depicted women who worked in brothels, bars, and nightclubs. He died of syphilis and tuberculosis in 1901 at the age of 36. How and when the prostitutes died is not recorded here.

Nightingale’s comments included,

Despite Laurence’s article, I went to see for myself. I marvelled in front of Angrand’s Ma Mère. Did I see misogyny there? No.

I melted in front of Courbet’s Portrait of the Artist’s Young Sister Juliet, Asleep. Did I see treachery there? No.

Did I care that Degas was a misogynist or that Renoir was a pervert or that Toulouse-Lautrec hung out with prostitutes? No, because finding out about the skeletons in an artist’s closet is not why I go to the gallery—I go to be moved by what they create.

Laurence seems to set a standard that you must approve of an artist’s dirty secrets before you can appreciate their art; call me naive, but I probably wouldn’t know anyone if I set standards like that.

In general, I separate the art from the artist so I can appreciate the work but I also find that knowing a little bit about the background can inform what I’m experiencing. For example, The Lady from Shanghai, a movie directed by Orson Welles released in 1947 and starring then wife, Rita Hayworth is an amazing work. The scene in the hall of mirrors where the two lead characters shoot out their reflections with the shattered glass refracting ever growing numbers of fractured reflections is still studied and marveled over. You can enjoy the movie as a work of art without ever knowing that Orson and Rita were experiencing a breakdown of their marriage and working together on the film was an attempt to repair it. I do find that knowing some of the background story to the movie makes me appreciate the movie all the more even as I wonder at Welles’ insistence that his famous wife dye her legendary hair from red to a platinum blonde and casting her as a heartless vamp.

In a way I find the work that Renoir, Dégas, and Toulouse-Lautrec, etc. all the more amazing given their enormous shortcomings. It’s a paradox and, for me, how you resolve the issue of art/artist is highly personal. For a contrasting example, Leni Riefenstahl produced two film masterpieces when she worked for Hitler, a man who engineered the death of entire Jewish populations in Europe during World War II (1939-1945). I have seen clips of her work but am not sure I could ever sit through an entire film. To date, I have not been able to separate the artist from the art.

There is a good reason for learning about the background or the story of an art work. For conceptual art and a lot of other contemporary art you need the story to make sense of what you’re seeing. For example, the latest show (my previous posting here) at the Rennie Collection features (amongst other pieces) a rifle or two and a huge canvas which is a partial recreation of a Georges Seurat painting from the 19th century. Unless you know something about Seurat and his paintings, you’re likely to dismiss it as it doesn’t make much sense. Thankfully, the gallery insists visitors go on a tour and are accompanied by someone who can tell you something about the show and what the artist is doing. There’s a reason for the rifle. The artist (Richard Jackson) uses it to shoot paint pellets at the canvas and there’s a reason why he picked a Seurat painting rather than another 19th century artist’s work. See my previous posting for more about this but very simply, Seurat was a very precise painter who worked with tiny dots to create his images which contrasts with hurling a paint pellet using the propulsive power of a rifle at a copy of one of his paintings.

Jackson has also created a series of bronze ballerinas reminiscent of Dégas. The Rennie Collection has one on display for this show and I had the good luck to talk to a trainee guide about the piece. I’ve described the piece in more detail in my previous posting but briefly, the dancer has been knocked off her pedestal and lies crumpled below it. There’s paint dripping from the pedestal and elsewhere (including her head as I recall). The paint colour for the ballerina in the Rennie Collection is red, other ballerinas in the series have different colours for the dripping paint. The guide had found out from the artist who visited Vancouver for several weeks before the show was opened, that this series is intended as a commentary on how artists use women in their work and a commentary on how women in the arts were treated in the 19th century. Serendipitously or not, the piece provides an interesting contrast to the big show currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery which you can only appreciate if you know the story.

I think there’s something to be said for being able to go and experience a piece of art without having a degree in art history or knowing the backstory. There’s also something to be said for having one or both. As for being able to separate the artist from his/her personal behaviour, that’s up to the individual. Like I said, sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. I imagine many folks are the same.

French want more nanotech public debates; British science oral history project

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After last month’s post about disturbances (causing at least one cancellation) taking place during a series of nanotechnology public debates in France, it was a surprise to find that at least one French group wants to continue the ‘discussion’. This last series of  events has been completed with a report due in April 2010. According to a news item on Chemical Watch, France Nature Environnement (FNE) is urging more public debates. From Chemical Watch,

The French public debate on nanotechnologies that began in September ended this week. An official summary of the 17 debates will be published at the end of April, but environmental organisation France Nature Environnement (FNE) says in its conclusions that further discussion is needed to decide where the technology is useful for human advancement and where its use is unacceptable.

You can look at the FNE news item here but it is in French and the site doesn’t seem hospitable to Firefox,  so do try another browser.

Meanwhile, the Brits are embarking on an oral history of British science. From the news item on BBC News,

The British Library has begun a project to create a vast, online oral history and archive of British science.

The three-year project will see 200 British scientists interviewed and their recollections recorded for the audio library.

…

“We have long been painfully aware that there’s a marked absence of significant recordings of scientists,” said Dr Rob Perks, curator of oral history at the British Library.

For instance, said Dr Perks, in the current sound archives there are only two recordings of Ernest Rutherford, none of computer pioneer Alan Turing, hovercraft inventor Christopher Cockerell or AV Hill, a physiologist and Nobel laureate.

A study carried out prior to the project being started found that in the last ten years, 30 leading British scientists including 9 Nobel winners have died leaving little or no archive of their work.

I’m glad to hear that this oral history is being preserved although I do wonder about the recording formats. One of the problems with archiving materials is maintaining to access them afterwards.

Coincidentally, one of the local Vancouver papers (The Georgia Straight) has an article by Rhiannon Coppin (in the Feb. 25 – March 4, 2010 issue) about the City of Vancouver archives and their attempts at digital archiving. From the article,

Every day, Vancouver’s city archivist and director of records and archives runs a rescue operation on our past. Les Mobbs might send out film reels from the ’30s for repair, or he could receive a donation of early-20th-century photographic negatives that need to be catalogued, scanned, and put into cold storage.

Lately, Mobbs has been putting equal consideration into how to preserve our future. More and more of the city’s legal and cultural record is being created in a digital format; in other words, it’s “born digital”, he told the Georgia Straight.

…

The pitfall in digital archiving is that we’re poor caretakers of electronic file formats. In 50 or 100 years, we’ll know we’ve won the preservation game if we can open and read a computer document created today. But even in 2010, we’re missing out on 20-year-old WordStar files stuck on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. Ironically, it may be safer to keep a paper copy of a document than to store the original computer file.

“We’ve been dealing with paper for 2,000 years,” Mobbs said. “We have a lot of experience with what paper is, what it looks like, and how it’s preserved.”

While acid decay, mould, brittleness, and water damage are formidable but vanquishable foes, machine decay, format obsolescence, and file integrity degradation are virtually unconquerable. The short lifetime of many licensed software formats and the quick deaths of so much hardware (remember LaserDisc?) have posed a particular challenge for archivists like Mobbs.

“How do we preserve material that is, for all intents and purposes, essentially transitory?” he asked.

While this discussion might seem irrelevant on a mostly science-oriented blog, the ‘memristor’ story highlights why information about the past is so important. In 2008, R. Stanley Williams (HP Labs) and his colleagues published two papers, the first proving the existence of a fourth member, a memristor, of electrical engineering’s ‘holy trinity’ of the resistor, capacitor, and inductor and the second paper where they established engineering control over the memristor. Williams  and his team both solved a problem they were experiencing in the lab and made engineering history, in part  by reviewing engineering theories dating back at least 30 years. You can read my post about it here.

Imagine if those theories had been locked into formats that were no longer accessible. That’s one of the major reasons for preserving the past, it can yield important information.

In the interest of full disclosure, I once worked for the City of Vancouver archives.