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Posts Tagged ‘detect’

Poison Books

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 28, 2025| 6 Comments »

Photo: University of St Andrews.
Books bound with potentially toxic green covers. 

With all the benighted book banning going on these days, you would think that the vigilantes had learned the written word would land people in the hospital. But reading is not lethal, and thinking about new ideas won’t kill anyone.

Having said that, I admit there is some reading material that may be dangerous to touch. Ella Creamer reports at the Guardian that “arsenic was historically mixed with copper to create a vivid green for book covers.”

“A new tool to quickly identify books that are poisonous to humans has been developed by the University of St Andrews,” Creamer writes. Historically, publishers used arsenic mixed with copper to achieve a vivid emerald green color for book covers. While the risk to the public is ‘low,’ handling arsenic-containing books regularly can lead to health issues including irritation of the eyes, nose and throat along with more serious side-effects. The toxic pigment in the book bindings can flake off, meaning small pieces can easily be inhaled.

“In recent years, many libraries have prevented access to all suspect green books as a precaution, as testing has until now been costly and time-consuming. … The new device can quickly and cheaply detect the presence of toxic pigment.

“ ‘A device used in the School of Earth Sciences to detect minerals in rocks was the starting point,’ said Pilar Gil, who led the research. ‘The Eureka moment was discovering the unique reflectance pattern from emerald green pigment in the visible spectrum. The idea was then to apply this discovery to an instrument which we could use and share with the sector.’

“Two scientists from the university’s astronomy and physics school, Graham Bruce and Morgan Facchin, developed a portable tool. ‘Our device shines different colors of light on to the book,’ said Facchin. ‘The amount of light reflected at each color is like a fingerprint of the pigment in the book.’ …

“The handheld device can screen books to test for the pigment in a fraction of a second. ‘Our team has been asked to look at thousands of books, of which more than 100 have been identified as containing emerald green pigment,’ said Bruce.

“At St Andrews, emerald green books are stored in Ziploc polythene bags. ‘When the books are used, we check first if there are any other copies available which are not bound in emerald green,’ reads the university’s website. ‘If not, the book is handled with special precautions such as the use of nitrile gloves.’ …

“ ‘The retention of green books from public view is not only a matter of safety, but it also restricts access to the information contained,’ said conservator Erica Kotze, who instigated the project. ‘This means that the books which have been tested and found not to contain the pigment can remain available to users.’

“A free exhibition exploring the project, Poisonous books – Dangers from the past, is running at the Wardlaw Museum in St Andrews until the end of July.”

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall, but please consider donating to support factual news.

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Ants Can Smell Cancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 19, 2023| 11 Comments »

From “The Ants Go Marching” song, via Kylie Van Dam.

When I was young, I remember being horrified and fascinated to learn that hospitals sometimes use live maggots in wound care because of their precision.

Maggots clear away gangrene and leave healthy tissue. The UK National Health Service says, “They also help fight infection by releasing substances that kill bacteria and stimulate the healing process.” It’s called biosurgery.

Now researchers are finding that ants also have medical uses. Dino Grandoni has the story at the Washington Post.

“The ant oncologist will see you now.

“Ants live in a world of odor. Some species are completely blind. Others rely so heavily on scent that ones that lose track of a pheromone trail march in a circle, until dying of exhaustion.

“Ants have such a refined sense of smell, in fact, that researchers are now training them to detect the scent of human cancer cells.

“A study published []in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences highlights a keen ant sense and underscores how someday we may use sharp-nosed animals — or, in the case of ants, sharp-antennaed — to detect tumors quickly and cheaply. That’s important because the sooner that cancer is found, the better the chances of recovery.

“ ‘The results are very promising,’ said Baptiste Piqueret, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany who studies animal behavior and co-wrote the paper. He added, however: ‘It’s important to know that we are far from using them as a daily way to detect cancer.’

“Stretching out their pair of thin sensory appendages atop their heads, the insects detect and deploy chemical cues to do almost everything — find food, swarm prey, spot colony mates, protect young. This chemical communication helps ants construct complex societies of queens and workers that operate so in sync with scent that scientists dub some colonies ‘superorganisms.’

“For his study, Piqueret’s team grafted pieces of a human breast-cancer tumor onto mice and trained 35 ants to associate urine from the tumor-bearing rodents with sugar. Placed in a petri dish, the silky ants (Formica fusca) spent significantly more time near tubes with urine from the ‘sick’ mice compared with urine from healthy ones. …

“The way we diagnose cancer today — by drawing blood, taking biopsies and conducting colonoscopies — is often expensive and invasive. Animal behaviorists are imagining a world in which doctors one day tap species with keen senses to help spot tumors quickly and cheaply.

“Dogs can sniff out the presence of cancer in body odor, past research has shown. Mice can be trained to discriminate between healthy and tumor-bearing compatriots. Nematodes are attracted to certain organic compounds associated with cancer. Even the neurons of fruit flies fire in the presence of certain cancerous cells.

“But ants, Piqueret suggested, may have the edge over dogs and other animals that are time-consuming to train.

“Piqueret conducted the research while studying at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord in France. During covid lockdowns, he brought silky ants into his apartment outside Paris to continue his experiments. He chose the species because it has a good memory, is easy to train and doesn’t bite (at least not hard). …

“Piqueret’s team plans to test ants’ ability to sniff out the markers of cancer in urine from actual patients. …

“If ants are ever used in cancer screening, Piqueret wants to make one thing clear: No, they will not need to crawl on you.

“ ‘There will be no direct contact between ants and patients,’ he said. ‘So even if people are afraid of insects, it’s fine.’ “

More at the Post, here. Interested in the wonders of ants? Follow this professor: @alexwild.

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Using E Coli Against Land Mines

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2021| 4 Comments »

Photo: Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In Israel, research with genetically modified bacteria is creating a new way to detect hidden land mines.

Giving credit where it’s due, I first learned at PRI’s The World that e coli is being used to detect forgotten land mines. You can listen to the radio broadcast here.

Then I went online and found a variety of articles on the research. This one is from the New York Times. Elizabeth Landau writes, “Land mines left over from bygone conflicts — or those still being fought — pose silent threats to millions of people around the world. With the help of bacteria that glow in their presence, these hidden hazards may one day be found and safely removed or destroyed.

“Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have spent a decade developing living land mine sensors using E. coli bacteria. In recent studies, they describe their latest progress. By using genetic engineering, they can turn each bacterium into ‘a miniature firefly’ in the presence of a chemical associated with the explosives, said Shimshon Belkin, the Hebrew University microbiologist leading the research.

“In 2019, more than 5,500 people were killed or injured by land mines and explosive remnants of war, and 80 percent of them were civilians, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Anti-personnel land mines, which can be only a few inches across and easily concealed, are especially dangerous. Estimates vary for the worldwide count of buried land mines, but they are as high as 110 million.

“Many strategies have been tried to locate land mines, such as using metal detectors and training detection animals, including an award-winning rat that helped locate 71 land mines before it retired. Each method balances benefits with risks and costs.

“The idea of rewiring bacteria to sense land mines originated with Robert Burlage, then at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Burlage worked on getting bacteria to light up in response to organic waste and mercury. Looking for a new application for this technique, he got the idea to try targeting land mine chemicals.

“Although Dr. Burlage conducted a few small field tests, he was unable to secure more funding and moved on. ‘My tale of woe,’ said Dr. Burlage, now a professor at Concordia University Wisconsin. …

“Bacteria are cheap and expendable and can be spread over a lot of ground. And they are relatively quick at reporting back — within hours, or up to a day, they either glow or they don’t.

“In studies published in the past year in Current Research in Biotechnology and Microbial Biotechnology, Dr. Belkin and his team describe tinkering with two key components of the E. coli genetic code: pieces of DNA called ‘promoters’ that act as on/off switches for genes, and ‘reporters’ that prompt light-emitting reactions. To produce this effect, researchers borrowed genes from marine bacteria that naturally emit light in the ocean.

“Scientists attuned the bacteria to a chemical called [DNT]. DNT vapor seeps into soil surrounding a land mine, and the bacteria can sniff it out. …

“One key challenge the group is working to overcome is safely locating the bioluminescent bacteria in a real minefield. When they detect land mines, their glow is so faint that light from the moon, stars or nearby cities could drown it out. …

“Aharon J. Agranat, a bioengineer at Hebrew University, and other researchers reported in April in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics that they had developed a device that shields the bacteria and detects their glow. This sensor system can then report its findings to a nearby computer, but it hasn’t been tested outside a laboratory setting. The researchers have also recently conducted field tests in Israel, collaborating with the Israeli army to ensure the safety of the experiments, as well as an Israeli defense company. The results of these tests have not been published, but Dr. Belkin called them ‘generally very successful.’ ” More here.

I know a little about the scourge of land mines from reading Laos-based mysteries by artist, educator, and activist Colin Cotterill. If you like fiction about foreign countries that not only introduces you to new geographies but also addresses the challenges to be found there, you will probably love Dr. Siri of The Coroner’s Lunch.

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