Printer Toner Linked to Genetic Changes, Health Risks in New Study
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:
Printer toner linked to genetic changes, health risks in new study:
Getting printer toner on your hands is annoying. Getting it in your lungs may be dangerous.
According to a new study by West Virginia University researcher Nancy Lan Guo, the microscopic toner nanoparticles that waft from laser printers may change our genetic and metabolic profiles in ways that make disease more likely. Her findings appear in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
"The changes are very significant from day one," said Guo, a professor in the School of Public Health and member of the Cancer Institute.
[...] "In particular, there is one group I really think should know about this: pregnant women. Because once a lot of these genes are changed, they get passed on through the generations. It's not just you."
On the same days that the researchers assessed the rats' genes, they also measured every metabolite available in their blood.
[...] The metabolic levels that the researchers detected reinforced their other findings. The same health risks that the genetic profiles pointed to were implicated by the metabolic profiles as well.
Building on these results, Guo and her colleagues have since investigated the genomic changes that Singaporean printing company workers have experienced. In many respects, the workers' genomes changed the same ways the rats' genomes did. The results from these workers are included in a manuscript ready for submission to a journal.
"And they're very young," Guo said. "A lot of the workers ranged from 20 to their early 30s, and you're already starting to see all of these changes.
"We have to work, right? Who doesn't have a printer nowadays, either at home or at the office? But now, if I have a lot to print, I don't use the printer in my office. I print it in the hallway."
Nancy Lan Guo, et. al. Integrated Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, and Lipidomics Profiling in Rat Lung, Blood, and Serum for Assessment of Laser Printer-Emitted Nanoparticle Inhalation Exposure-Induced Disease Risks. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2019; 20 (24): 6348 DOI: 10.3390/ijms20246348
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