Pulmonary Toxicity of Indium Tin Oxide and Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide
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Pulmonary Toxicity of Indium Tin Oxide and Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide 1 1 2 3 3 Akiyo Tanaka , Miyuki Hirata , Kazunori Koga , Makiko Nakano , Kazuyuki Omae and 1 Yutaka Kiyohara 1. Department of Environmental Medicine, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, EC Bldg 2F, 6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan 2. Department of Electronics, Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan 3. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, School of Medicine, Keio University, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-8582, Japan ABSTRACT The aim of this review is to introduce the adverse health effects of indium compounds. This review consists of 2 parts: (1) a study of the toxic effects of indium compounds in humans, and (2) a study of the toxic effects of indium tin oxide (ITO) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) in animals. To date, 4 epidemiological surveys have been conducted of indium-handling workers in Japan, and all who were studied showed that exposure to indium compounds caused pulmonary interstitial and emphysematous changes. There were clear dose-response and dose-effect relationships between the serum indium levels and the levels of Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6), which is a serological indicator of interstitial pneumonia. Up until 2011, 8 cases of interstitial pneumonia in Japanese indium-exposed workers, 2 cases of pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) in US indium-exposed workers, and 1 case of PAP in a Chinese indium-exposed worker have been reported. In animal studies, it has been clearly demonstrated that ITO and CIGS particles cause pulmonary toxicity and that the dissolution of ITO and CIGS particles in the lungs is considerably slow when repeated intratracheal instillations were given to experimental animals. Thus, more studies are needed on the effects of human exposure to indium compounds. INTRODUCTION Indium is an essential rare metal that is used in the electronics industry, and the use of indium compounds has risen sharply since the 1990s [1]. Of the indium compounds, indium tin oxide (ITO), which is a sintered alloy that contains 90% ITO and 10% tin oxide, is used for liquid-crystal panels, plasma display panels, and cell phone displays, and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), which is a new, efficient, and thin-film solar cell that is used in some types of solar cells, is used in roofing materials and various applications in aerospace and recreational industries [2-4]. Until the beginning of the 1990s, there was little information regarding the adverse health effects in humans or animals that arise from exposure to indium compounds, and, thus, it was thought that indium compounds were not harmful. However, due to the increasingly frequent industrial use of indium compounds, the potential occupational exposure to indium compounds has attracted much attention. After the mid-1990s, data became available that indicated that indium compounds can be toxic to anima
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