Nano is hot. Apple isn’t the only one to call a product the Nano, there’s also a car by that name, and I have a feeling it’ll label more than a few kindergarten cubbies in a couple of years; forget Madison and Montana, what could be hipper these days than naming your little sprout Nano? We’re brushing our teeth with Nanowhitening Toothpaste, putting our kids in Nano-tex pants, fixing furniture with NanoGlue, smoothing our skin with Nano-Gold Energizing Cream, trying to lose weight by popping nanoSlim pills, and using some 600 other consumer products containing nanoparticles. (It’s amazing what people will buy because it sounds high tech.)
That’s about a hundred more than existed last fall, when Spectrum authors Barbara Karn and H. Scott Matthews warned that research in nanotechnology safety is falling behind its commercial progress, and that the technology has the potential to be the next major environmental and health disaster.
A three-part PBS series this month makes the same point. “The Power of Small,” produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and funded by the National Science Foundation, looks at the potential impacts of nanotechnology on privacy, security, health, and the environment. Check here for local broadcast information; broadcasts started last month and continue throughout May. You can also watch excerpts online. Spectrum’s reviewer says it could have been done a lot better, but at least it’s a start in building awareness.
And it’s worth making yourself aware of at least the potential for risk, because nanotechnology continues its rush into the consumer marketplace. Last year, according to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, $88 billion worth of products containing nanoparticles were sold worldwide.The fastest growing category—health and fitness. The most popular nanosubstance is silver, carbon is in second place, followed by zinc, titanium, silica, and gold.
In most cases, the nanoparticles are accepted by the consumer and regulators without question. Not always. In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined IOGear, a manufacturer of computer peripherals, for marketing keyboards and mice that purported to contain antimicrobial properties without registering the products as containing pesticides. Products with pesticides cannot be sold unless they’ve been tested to show that they won’t harm the user under normal conditions. IOGear stopped making the antimicrobial claims, though it didn’t necessarily stop using the nanoparticle coating on its devices.
The U.S. Senate has begun to debate the future direction of its funding of nanotechnology research. In HR 5940, the National Nanotechnology Initiatives Act of 2008, it may strengthen the environmental safety and health aspects of the federal nanotechnology research program. After hearings in April, the bill was referred to the House Committee on Science and Technology, you can follow its progress here.
