Assessing the pulmonary toxicity of single-walled carbon nanohorns

Single walled carbon nanohorns as photothermal cancer agents

“…First, the addition of SWNHs without laser treatment (0 minutes) has no noticeable effect on viability. This supports previous work, which indicates that SWNHs are non-toxic [21,25]. The laser irradiated samples without SWNHs experience relatively gradual reductions in viability with increasing heating duration.…”

“…In addition, the diameter of SWNHs may be adjusted by varying the pulse length of the laser during fabrication [23] and internal pore volume may be modified by tuning oxidative heating parameters [24]. Several recent studies confirmed SWNHs to be non-irritants, non-dermal sensitizers through skin conjunctival irritation tests, and non-carcinogenic through negative mutagenic and clastogenic potentials [21,25]. These studies observed no skin or eye irritation, and no mortality or unusual weight loss due to oral ingestion.…”

“…These studies observed no skin or eye irritation, and no mortality or unusual weight loss due to oral ingestion. Intratracheal instillation tests found some incidences of foamy macrophages and anthracosis, but neither resulted in increased mortality rates [21,25]. Furthermore, the extensive surface area, multitude of interstices inherent to SWNHs, and accessible internal volume permit the addition of guest molecules [26].…”

Development of multifunctional materials exhibiting distributed sensing and actuation inspired by fish

“…SWNH are typically produced by laser ablation of pure graphite target samples; therefore, metal contamination is not an issue in the preparation in comparison with usual nanotube preparation. To date, studies of these SWNHs exhibit low toxicity [47]. The extensive surface area and multitude of interstices inherent to SWNHs permit the opportunity for addition of guest molecules.…”

“…Recently, single-walled carbon nanohorn (SWNH) agglomerates have been prepared and consist of thousands of nanotubes with individual diameters of 2-5 nm arranged in structures possessing overall diameters of 50-100 nm [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Each individual SWNH has an open and a closed end; all the open ends are oriented toward the center of the structure and closed ends point out toward the periphery.…”