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The Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) researchers have found that carbon nanofibers reduce behavioral functions and cognitive activity. The FEFU researchers presented the results of the research on this topic at the EUROTOX 2016 Congress of the European Societies of Toxicology in Spain. The reports at the world's largest scientific forum on Toxicology were made on behalf of FEFU by Kirill Golokhvast, the Deputy Director of the School of Natural Sciences, Head of Nanotechnology Research and Education Center of the School of Engineering and Valery Chernyshev, the Senior Lecturer, Department of Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Industry.

According to Kirill Golokhvast the FEFU researchers in partnership with colleagues from Greece, Turkey, Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Blagoveshchensk held pioneer research on the intersection of Nanotoxicology and Neurophysiology. They studied the effects of artificially created carbon nanofibers on the physiology of higher nervous activity of experimental animals (rats) in the laboratory for a month.

"Unlike the nanotubes, nanofibers are still very insufficiently studied type of particles, and their influence on the nervous activity in principle nobody investigated before us. Nanofibers are contained in large quantities in the human environment, for example, in soot after forest fires and in automobile exhaust," explained Kirill Golokhvast. "The data resulting from the tests and analyses showed that the impact of carbon nanofibers on the body leads to a decrease in behavioral functions and cognitive activity. This allows us to draw conclusions that depression, stress, and fatigue of the inhabitants of big cities are the results, among other things, of the permanent presence in the air of the nanoparticles of different origin.

The study is supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation, and the results in the form of theses have already been published in Toxicology Letters journal (Impact Factor is 3.522). The authors intend to submit more details about their work in several leading international journals before the end of the year.

EUROTOX 2016 was held in early September in Seville (Spain), with the participation of 1200 scientists from 61 countries. This spring, Kirill Golokhvast became the EUROTOX European Registered Toxicologist (ERT), among the first Russian scientists. EUROTOX is presided by Aristides Tsatsakis, who is the Lead Researcher of the FEFU Nanotechnology Center and manages the large research project to study the impact of car exhaust gases on the ecology of the modern city.

Anna Leonteva,
leonteva.as@dvfu.ru