Louise A. Bunting has tiny reservations about selling sunscreen and makeup to customers at her Georgetown-area hair and tanning salon.
"Nano-size" reservations.
Bunting is on the front line in the emerging debate over the promise and pitfalls of nanotechnology -- the explosively growing business of making and using things smaller than 100 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, and it takes 80,000 of them to equal the width of a human hair.
Nanoscale materials behave in unusual ways, combining with other materials like nothing else. In that uniqueness lies their potential for amazing new products worth trillions, and unknown environmental threats.
Bunting and many experts worry about unexamined or unexpected hazards from nanoparticles when they come into direct contact with people and the environment. Researchers and government regulators say far more study is needed of the unique risk posed by these manmade, atom-sized materials capable of slipping through tissues and even living cells.
"I won't sell sunscreens any more at all. I stopped this past summer," Bunting said. "You don't know what's in them, and you don't know if they're using something that can get into somebody's bloodstream."
But nanomaterials also open the door to such things as metal-coated plastics -- stronger than aluminum or steel -- for very light automobiles. Nano-coated clothing fibers could lead to flexible garments capable of conducting light and energy, changing patterns and colors on demand, while nanomedicines could help overcome killer diseases and genetic disorders.
Delaware-based DuPont Co. is a global leader in the development of nanoscale materials. The company also is prominent in worldwide talks on the technology, including one convened last week in Paris on ways to assure the safety of nanoscale goods and industries.
Earlier this year, the company released what it described as a voluntary environmental "framework" for industries developing nanomaterials, aimed at improving risk assessments and information sharing. Environmental Defense, a national nonprofit, worked with DuPont for two years on the project.
The fundamental issue separating DuPont and many environmentalists is whether the nanotech industry can be trusted to regulate itself. DuPont wants more study of the risks and need for regulation and favors voluntary "stewardship" for now, but many others say federal agencies should set the rules now, much as they do for the chemical industry.
George A. Kimbrell, staff attorney for the International Center for Technology Assessment, a nonprofit environmental and consumer group, said there's an inherent risk when industry is left to regulate itself.
"In general, you've got a 'foxes in the henhouse' situation when you're talking about industry partnering with government," Kimbrell said.
Experts predict a flood of nanotech-enabled products: from better cosmetics and paints to inexpensive solar panels, molecule-sized circuits and medical devices and "smart" filters able to quickly clean up tainted groundwater or infected blood.
One government estimate in 2000 put the potential value of nanoscale products at $1 trillion by 2015, with nanomaterials expected to crop up in every part of the global economy and human life. More recent forecasts peg the market at $2.5 trillion by the same year.
Hundreds of products already
Nanomaterials already pervade our world, though most people don't know it.
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, managed by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., tracks nanoproducts and industries. It listed nearly 600 nanoproducts in October, mostly in consumer, electronic and recreational products, with even more nanotech materials used in manufacturing -- and the number is growing daily.
Some newer sunscreens contain nanomaterials because the tinier particles make the lotions harder to see on the skin without loss of effectiveness. But some researchers have speculated that the tinier particles could work deeper into tissues, potentially exposing living skin cells to chemical reactions triggered by light, a process that could raise the cancer risks that sunscreen users are trying to avoid.
Carbon nanotubes, used in hockey sticks and other sports equipment, can behave like asbestos in the human body. Carbon "buckyballs," another nanocreation, already have been linked to serious or fatal effects on tiny water organisms and fish.
But the government currently has no pre-sale labeling or testing requirements for nanoadditives in cosmetics, and federal regulators have ruled out the use of size alone to require additional toxic regulation and testing.
"This is only the beginning," a paper authored by Wilson Center staffers cautioned in 2006. "It is expected that succeeding generations of nano-based products will have far greater and more profound societal implications. New risks to the public's health and to the environment could emerge" as increasingly sophisticated nanoproducts are designed for medicines, science and other endeavors.
Those issues were one focus of a meeting late last week in Paris, where representatives of the world's 30 leading economies met to discuss, among other topics, how to best manage nanotechnology risks.
DuPont was represented prominently.
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Risks of Nanos No Small Matter
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From sunscreen to food packaging to clothing, nanotechnology offers a world of possibilities
By JEFF MONTGOMERY
The News Journal, December 2, 2007
Straight to the Source
