Nanotechnology: Safety Issues

The Current Ubiquity of Nanotechnology Is nanotechnology safe for humans? Nanoproducts are everywhere. There are currently over 1000 nanotechnology-based consumer products on the market.^1,2 An inventory of nanoengineered products is maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) and published on their web site (Table 1).¹

Some products boldly declare nanotechnology in their advertising such as Bionic Joint Support™ “…it's worth taking advantage of a nanosphere liposomal delivery system”³; other manufacturers use nanoparticles but choose not to advertise the fact. Employment of nanoengineered particles in manufacturing is increasing at an enormous rate, but reporting the use of nanomaterials is voluntary. Maynard and Rejeski say these voluntary efforts have been unsuccessful.⁴ The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that “approximately 90% of the different nanoscale materials likely to be commercially available were not reported”.^4,5

Consumers are exposed to nanoparticles daily, without even realizing it, from natural sources as they are present in soot and many living and non-living entities in nature. Nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide (TiO₂) and zinc oxide are used in sunscreens and cosmetics. Titanium dioxide is also used as a food additive to whiten creamy products such as salad dressings, and it is used in candies and non-dairy creamers.⁶ Nanomaterials are internalized by ingestion of food, medication or supplements that contain microparticles (Figure 1). Silicates and aluminosilicates are added to food products as an adsorbent to prevent caking. The average person ingests approximately 1012 submicron-sized particles each day in the form of food additives.⁶

Exposure to Nanomaterials There…

ABBREVIATIONS: FDA= Federal Drug Administration; MSDS= material safety data sheets; ASR= analyte specific reagents; NIOSH = National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIST = National Institute of Standards and Technology; OTC = over-the-counter; NIL= National Information Library; FTC= Federal Trade Commission; CDER= Center for Drug Evaluation and Research; EPA= Environmental Protection Agency; NST= Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; NTF= Nanotechnology Task Force; PEN = Project on Emerging Technologies.