How do you get the ketchup to slide easily out of the bottle? Nanoparticles. They're the miracle technology we're using in everything from sunscreen to paint. But how much do we really know about nanotechnology and its potential impact on our health?
BY ALEX
ROSLIN
August 11, 2012
August 11, 2012
THE MONTREAL GAZETTE
If you have Robert Schiestl over to your house,
don’t be surprised to see him peeking at ingredient labels on things in your
kitchen or bathroom.
He can’t help it. Schiestl, a leading U.S. cancer
expert, instinctively reads the label before he buys or uses a host of products
— any food that’s partly white, toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo,
over-the-counter medicine.
He’s trying to avoid nanoparticles, which a growing
pile of studies say may cause cancer, damage to organs and skin, Crohn’s
disease and environmental pollution.
Labels in Canada and the U.S. don’t have to say
whether a product contains nanoparticles — so to be completely sure, Schiestl
avoids all products with two ingredients that are increasingly used in
nano-form: titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.
The tiny particles causing the concern are as
little as 10,000 times the width of a human hair and are measured in
nanometres, or billionths of a metre.
They’re part of a revolutionary technology that’s
been touted as “the most powerful tool the human species has ever used” —
giving us the ability to build anything we can conceive molecule by molecule,
and potentially leading to healthier lives and cleaner energy.
Governments, eager to get on the nanotechnology
bandwagon, have shovelled huge public subsidies into nanotech in the past
decade, fuelling its growth into a $250-billion-per-year global industry that
is expected to grow to $3 trillion by 2015.
The subsidies have helped promote the use of
nanoparticles in thousands of goods — everything from food colouring to
scratch-resistant coating on eyeglasses and anti-bacterial agent in clothes.
Nanotech has even answered the age-old problem of
getting ketchup out of the bottle. In 2007, German scientists developed a
super-slippery nano-coating for bottles that lets ketchup slide out more
easily.
Yet, more than a decade after nanoparticles started
being widely used in consumer products, they are still subject to virtually no
regulation in Canada, and little is known about their health impacts....
[Read the rest of this story here. Also see "How Nanoparticles Are Made?" and "Sweets, Sunscreen, Toothpaste: Labels Tell Only Part of the Story."]
