Plants accumulates nanoparticles

22 December 2008

A laboratory study carried out by researchers at University of Delaware has indicated that plants can undertake nanoparticles and accumulate these nanoparticles in their tissues and this shows that these can enter into human food chain. Yan Jin, professor of soil physics and John Xiao, professor of physics and their colleagues Jung-yong Lee and Harsh Bais, carried out the research and took a pumpkin for the current study.

Lots of nanoparticles occur naturally in environment, however presently a large number of applications from electronics to energy are based on nanoparticles and therefore these are largely being manufactured by commercial organizations. The major disadvantages with these nanoparticles are that the health risk associated with these particles is not yet established. There are many concerns with the use of these nanoparticles and even these particles can enter trough breathing and can damage our vital organs.

Researchers took pumpkin for the study as it is easy to grow and take a lot of water and after adding the nanoparticles of iron oxide to the aqueous solution, researchers used a magnetometer for detecting the nanoparticles in the dried pumpkin plant. After 20 days the plant was cut and dried in vacuum desiccators and thereafter the presence of nanoparticles were detected in presence of strong magnetic field.

Researchers used low frequency monotone for vibrating the dried pumpkin plant and unique magnetic signals were able to reveal the location of nanoparticles inside the plants. Researcher further carried out the research on pumpkin grown in sand and soil and found that there is little and no uptake of nanoparticles in comparison to the strong uptake in pumpkin plants grown in aqueous solution.

Although this is a preliminary study, there is much scope for extending the study in a complete range of plants and other soil conditions.

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