Earth & Sky

Can you tell which consumer products are nano?

Nanoparticles are in hundreds of products on the market today. How do you know which ones?

Nanoparticles are invisibly tiny, engineered particles. They’re in hundreds of products on the market today, from tennis rackets, to sunscreens to diet milkshakes. But it’s hard to find out which merchandise includes nanoparticles.

Kristen Kulinowski: One of the really interesting challenges now for consumers is that there are no standards for product labeling for nanomaterials.

That’s Kristen Kulinowski, Director of the International Council on Nanotechnology at Rice University.

Kristen Kulinowski: Some companies are using the nano label as a selling feature, because nano has the cache of being super high–tech and new and glitzy. Some companies are using it even when there may be no nanoparticles in the product. You may either see nano on the label where there is no nano inside, or there might be, or you might not see any indication of nanotechnology on the label. But there might be nanoscale materials in that product, and there just really isn’t any way to know for sure.

So what do you do if you want to know whether your house paint, for example, or sunscreen, contains nanomaterials?

In early 2006, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies put together an online inventory of nanotechnology–based consumer products.

Our thanks to the National Science Foundation.

1 Comments for Can you tell which consumer products are nano?

1. 1

   Jun 6, 05:40 PM #

   tanner says:

   It’s not right to put nanoparticles in things without telling people. we don’t know enough yet to know if they’re safe. we should get to choose if we want to take that risk!