Buyer beware: Product list highlights both nanotech and nano-marketing

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Mar. 16, 2006 – At its maturity, experts say the science of nanotechnology could one day spur breakthrough cures for cancer and other diseases.

Until that long-awaited day, consumers are likely to experience nanotechnology in more pedestrian ways — perhaps by chewing chocolate-flavored gum or buying diamonds cultured in labs, not mined from the Earth.

Those are among hundreds of available consumer products being spawned as companies manipulate matter at the atomic level, according to The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, a Washington, D.C. initiative associated with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The group last week released a products inventory containing descriptions of more than 200 consumer goods purportedly made with some type of nanotech process or nanomaterial.

“This is the face of nanotechnology,” project director David Rejeski, nodding to a modest assortment of nanotech-based products, told a gathering of reporters and researchers. “Nanotechnology isn’t about cures for cancer (yet), although that day is coming. But these are the artifacts that consumers can purchase in stores now.”

Those products include car wax, household cleaners, paints, tennis rackets and golf balls. Also included is a rash of products that are ingestible or that find their way into the human body through other means — and which are largely unregulated by government agencies.

Available online for free, the product inventory is designed to give consumers a glimpse into how pervasive nanotechnology is becoming in manufacturing, said Rejeski. Some of the 212 items were bought online directly from manufacturers by project officials. The products are grouped into eight broad categories, with health and fitness being the largest with about 125 products.

The list includes products from companies in 15 different countries, with U.S. manufacturers accounting for nearly 75 percent of all entries. It was compiled using English-only Internet searches of company Web sites, organizers said.

“The fact that we only did searches in English is one reason we believe there are far more products available than we included in the inventory. We hope to expand it to foreign language searches” for a more comprehensive listing over time, said Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the project, a partnership between the Wilson center and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Useful Information?

Given the list’s main purpose is to educate consumers, project organizers say they did not analyze potential markets for the products, including whether or not customers even want them. Independent research groups were not invited to vet the list, nor were companies whose products appear in the inventory directly contacted for input.

Instead, project organizers relied on product descriptions gleaned from company Web sites, a fact they concede makes it difficult to accurately determine whether a manufacturing process reflects true nanotech applications. Complicating matters, they said, is the lack of a universally agreed-upon definition for nanotechnology.

“Our sense was that once we started talking to companies it would give them a chance to create their own definition (to determine whether or not they would be included on the list). We limited our inclusion of companies to those that were controlling matter on the nanometer level,” Maynard said.

Other nanotechnology sector experts say the group’s database of products is interesting but fails to break much new ground.

“What they’re really studying is how products are being marketed using the nanotechnology label,” said Christine Peterson, vice president of public policy for the Foresight Nanotech Institute, a Palo Alto, Calif., think tank that specializes in the sector.

The inventory provides few details on how nanomaterials are specifically used to fabricate products. For example, carbon, silver and silica are listed as the three most commonly used materials, although it is unclear from the descriptions if the molecules are contained in matrices or are fully dispersible.

A handful of products were dropped from consideration when it appeared companies were calling them nano-based as a marketing ploy, Maynard said, but when uncertainty surrounded an item “we erred on the side of including it rather than leaving it out.”

Red Flags Raised

In one sense, the group’s report could be viewed as a call for greater regulatory oversight, an issue bound up with federal funding. Many of the products in the inventory are intended for human consumption, either directly such as dietary supplements or indirectly in the form of lotions, sunscreens or cosmetics that get absorbed through the skin, raising possible health concerns.

“I think the government has to put more money and people into the regulatory side. This inventory shows that nanotechnology is larger than just a research issue now,” said Rejeski.

One of the companies included is Apollo Diamond, a Boston company that uses chemical vapor deposition of carbon to produce diamonds for jewelry and semiconductors. Bryant Linares, its chief executive officer, said the product inventory could be useful in shining the spotlight on the tremendous potential of nanotechnology.

“If the express purpose of this is to get people to see the power of building very small things, it will be a great tool. But if it’s going to be used for some hidden agenda or to pass new laws on use of nanomaterials, that would be problematic,” said Linares.

If nothing else, the list may stimulate debate about the federal government’s role in crafting stricter consumer safety regulations. Environmental activists also could find the information useful in framing questions about how industries safely dispose of waste materials generated from nanotech manufacturing.

“I think (the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) wants a higher profile for the fact that there are regulatory holes in some industries,” said Peterson. “If that’s what they accomplish, that’s fine.”

Not included on the list were products whose sole applications were for industry, such as advanced materials or thin films used to produce large commercial products.

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