Stop the madness! Again! Some More!

Carbon nanotubes bad for your lungs? The environment? (Your lungs.)

Okay, maybe I'm being something of an alarmist, but one really can't ignore stuff like this outright:

Carbon Nanotubes That Look Like Asbestos, Behave Like Asbestos

New study shows inhaling long, thin carbon nanotubes may result in asbestos-like health effects.

This is the head and sub-head of an article on The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies website. It's based on a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that reports on a study done that indicates that carbon nanotubes, introduced into the body (the tests were conducted on mice), have an asbestos-like pathogenicity.

Remember asbestos? If it got into your lungs, you were pretty much toast. Asbestos fibers were long, thin fibers very much like carbon-nanotubes.

Go here to read the PEN article: http://www.nanotechproject.org/news/archive/mwcnt/

Go here to read the abstract of the Nature Nanotechnology article: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n7/abs/nnano.2008.111.html

I was turned onto this by a post on the Cozy Beehive. (In the same post there's some love for Thomson components-- which are NOT carbon composite!)

Why am I bothering with this? I'm not a huge fan of carbon composites in general. Now I'm not a "Luddite" but sometimes I think we humans have a tendency to do things because we can (Times like this I'm always reminded of the joke about why dogs lick their balls...)

We've created this wonderful amazing material, but what is the net effect of its creation and disposal? I mean, c'mon-- go Google "snapped carbon steerer" or some variation and you'll doubtless turn up plenty of scary reading material. And that's just for steerers-- not handlebars, forks, seatposts and even frames.

I'll mention this again-- do carbon composite materials degrade into healthful fertilizer when they're disposed of? Or do they shed harmful component chemicals and dangerous particulate matter?

I know I'm just scratching the surface and not touching on other toxic manufacturing processes involved in the manufacture of metal alloy bicycles and components.

Still... I guess it's good to ask questions, right?

Stop the madness!

This is obviously one of the signs of the apocalypse:

Bonty's new carbon composite mountain bike wheels.

When I was in high school I remember getting totally excited to see Kestrel's full-suspension concept mountain bike utilizing nary a lick of metal tubing for the main triangle and swingarm. All carbon composite. As Chowder would put it: "Excitement!" That bike never saw the light of day-- the light of day that filters through a bike shop's front window, that is. It remained a concept bike.

Then there was that weird Trimble thing. Brent Trimble was actually the designer/builder behind Kestrel's hubba-hubba concept bike that got me so excited (I believe). I actually saw one of those in a bike shop.

This was 1988-1989. Maybe 1987. I still have my 1989 steel Specialized Sumpjumper. I've not seen any of those composite-framed bikes anywhere in the last 15 years. Not hanging on a wall, not being ridden. I see tons and tons of 1970's steel Peugeots, Schwinns, Sears, etc. out and about. Why? Why is that? The carbon-composite proponents like to laud carbon's nigh infinite fatigue life. Where are these everlasting carbon-coposite bikes?

Hang on. I must inetrject-- I'm a total retro-grouch. I've come a long way from the drooling school-boy lusting over the Trimble and the vapor-ware Bushido racer (10 points if you can post a pic of the Bushido.) I no longer think that carbon composites have much place on bicycles.

They're too vulnerable. A scratch and effectively ruin (total?) a carbon-composite part. And I've only been racing cyclocross three seasons but I've seen enough broken composite seatposts to make my bung pucker up to the size of a pore. And the one snapped fork was one too many.

I've also read about too many snapped carbon steerers. Well, again-- one is too many. Makes me cringe.

So where am I going? Carbon wheels for mountain bikes are insane unless you're a pro and someone else is providing you with hardware. Or you're stupidly rich.

Maybe in another 10-15 years we'll have carbon composite bikes and components that won't fail in such spectacular ways and turn themselves into toxic, non-recyclable land-fill.

End of rant. Sorry.