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Nature Nanotechnology 4, 708–710 (1 November 2009) | doi:10.1038/nnano.2009.327

Nanotoxicology: New insights into nanotubes

Ken Donaldson & Craig A. Poland

Between the latter half of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century, the commercial exploitation of asbestos, mostly in the building industry, caused a pandemic of lung disease in workers exposed to asbestos dust. As possibly the greatest occupational health disaster in modern history, this led to widespread suffering, the demise of an industry and, in public/occupational health terms, a deep mistrust of any fibrous (long and thin) particles that can get airborne and are small enough to be inhaled.