Origins of Fullerenes in Rocks

Fullerenes in asphaltenes and other carbonaceous materials: natural constituents or laser artifacts

A comprehensive investigation of the formation of fullerenes from carbonaceous materials using laser-based mass spectrometry techniques.

Evaluation of extraction methods for quantification of aqueous fullerenes in urine

There is a growing concern about the human and environmental health effects of fullerenes (e.g., C(60)) due to their increasing application in research, medicine, and industry. Toxicological and pharmacokinetic research requires standard methods for extraction and detection of fullerenes from biological matrices such as urine. The present study validates the use of liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and solid-phase extraction (SPE) methods in conjunction with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) for the quantitative determination of C(60) in human and synthetic urine as compared with ultrapure water. Glacial acetic acid, which is necessary to prevent emulsions during LLE, inhibited C(60) detection by LC-MS, but this could be mitigated with evaporation. Aqueous C(60) aggregates (nC(60)) were spiked at 180 μg/L into the components of a synthetic urine recipe to determine their individual impacts on extraction and detection. Urea, creatinine, and a complex protein (i.e., gelatin) were found to impair SPE, leading to a low recovery rate of 43 ± 4% for C(60) spiked into human urine. In contrast, C(60) was consistently recovered from synthetic matrices using LLE, and recovery in human urine was 80 ± 6%. These results suggest that LLE combined with LC-MS is suitable for studying the clearance of fullerenes from the body. LLE is a robust technique that holds promise for extracting C(60) from other complex biological matrices (e.g., blood, sweat, amniotic fluid) in toxicological studies, enabling a better understanding of the behavior of fullerenes in human and animal systems and facilitating a more comprehensive risk evaluation of fullerenes.

Strategies for quantifying C(60) fullerenes in environmental and biological samples and implications for studies in environmental health and ecotoxicology

Fullerenes are sphere-like molecules with unique physico-chemical properties, which render them of particular interest in biomedical research, consumer products and industrial applications. Human and environmental exposure to fullerenes is not a new phenomenon, due to a long history of hydrocarbon-combustion sources, and will only increase in the future, as incorporation of fullerenes into consumer products becomes more widespread for use as anti-aging, anti-bacterial or anti-apoptotic agents.An essential step in the determination of biological effects of fullerenes (and their surface-functionalized derivatives) is establishment of exposure-assessment techniques. However, in ecotoxicological studies, quantification of fullerenes is performed infrequently because robust, uniformly applicable analytical approaches have yet to be identified, due to the wide variety of sample types. Moreover, the unique physico-chemistry of fullerenes in aqueous matrices requires reassessment of conventional analytical approaches, especially in more complex biological matrices (e.g., urine, blood, plasma, milk, and tissue).Here, we present a review of current analytical approaches for the quantification of fullerenes and propose a consensus approach for determination of these nanomaterials in a variety of environmental and biological matrices.