Some bad actors': Coal burning found to release possibly toxic nanoparticles

Coal combustion, already one of the main sources of pollution, has also been found to release nano particles of titanium that are potentially harmful to humans and other life forms, researchers say.

Researchers in the US discovered the titanium
suboxides when examining a coal ash spill.

US-based scientists accidentally discovered the tiny traces of the metal – in the form of titanium suboxides measuring in the billionths of a metre – when studying a coal ash spill in the Dan River in North Carolina in 2014, Science Daily reported earlier this year.

The substance had previously been considered rare, located in mudstones in a small area of western Greenland, moon rocks and in some meteorites.

It turns out, however, that forms of titanium oxides "are essentially a ubiquitous accessory phase in all coals worldwide", the researchers said in a paper published in Nature Communications.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Some bad actors': Coal burning found to release possibly toxic nanoparticles.”