When radioactive fallout was found to have contaminated some of Japan’s local food and drink after the 2011 tsunami battered a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, it inspired some scientists to look for ways to purify liquids. One researcher diverted his work on nanoparticles originally designed to “mine uranium from seawater or to decontaminate waterways.” He’s now adapting his work to make nanoparticles attach to a pellet that can decontaminate radioactive liquids.

The nanoparticles that coat the pellets are microscopic grains of materials called metal oxides. They absorb “a variety of radioactive materials such as uranium and strontium, as well as non-radioactive toxic elements such as lead and arsenic.” They attach tightly to the pellets and “will not detach into the liquid,” according to the researcher. Then the pellets are placed in a porous capsule and “would be too large to fall out.”

Sounds like a bug or animal trap that lets the creature in but won’t let it get out. Hmm. We’d have to place a great deal of trust in this invention to give our kids such “formerly” radioactive milk to drink. But then, that’s the kind of trust we put into a lot of what medicine prescribes (think: statins) and what manufacturers put in our homes or on our plates (think: GMO foods).

The technology has not yet gone commercial so you definitely won’t see boxes of “anti-radiation” pills in your local drug store any time soon. It’s a great idea, but let’s pray it will end up like the famed *backyard atomic bomb shelters of the 1950s–we don’t ever find out how well it works because we never have to use it.

* For those of you too young to remember, after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan to end WWII, the U.S. government had schools conducting air-raid drills in which kids hid under their desks and had citizens learning how to dig bomb shelters in their backyards.

Like a grade school desk or a foot of dirt would protect you from an atom bomb…

My sister and her husband recently had to cut short their vacation in the mountains of western U.S. They got extremely sick with altitude sickness. Scary.

Well, apparently even 500 years of living at high altitudes is not enough time for humans to adapt so that their lungs work well enough to prevent altitude sicknesses. But Tibetans, who’ve been living at high altitudes for 25,000 years, and Bolivians who’ve also lived in the mountains for thousands of years have adapted so well that they completely avoid altitude sickness. Their lungs now automatically produce more nitric oxide than we plain dwellers, according to this article on CNN.com about how Tibetans and Viagra demonstrate the power of nitric oxide.

They don’t advise mountain climbers to run out and buy Viagra to solve the issue. The drug comes in big doses and only lasts “up to 4 hours,” but your lungs don’t need that much. More research will certainly be done to determine the magic combination and proper dosage that will work for high-altitude short-termers.

I love discovering new uses for this multi-talented substance that our bodies produce. Check out some interesting BioMedNews posts on nitric oxide.