Nano technologi
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support for living on Earth comes from listeners like you. Please make a donation online at yellowy dot org or call me at 6176293638 and thanks. It's living on Earth. I'm Bruce Kellerman. The Nano technology industry says that very good things will come in very small packages, promising breakthrough medical cures new materials in revolutionary products. But those tiny packages could also contain some nasty surprises. Now technology deals in the smallest of the small down at the size of atoms and molecules. But that scale things get really strange. Carbon nanotubes is stronger than steel, and nano gold turns intense red. Living on Earth is thinking big about small things. With a new series of stories are nanotechnology. We call, Let's get small Today, living on Earth's Jeff Young does a little shopping and finds Nano Silver. I'm shopping in a Korean grocery store in Germantown, Maryland. Scientist Andrew Maynard Maynard has just one item on his shopping list. This is, Ah, toothpaste that is imported from career that uses nano silver particles, so we're going to see whether we can find it on the shelves here. Maynard studies nano technology for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. After a little poking around, he finds toothpaste that claims that Nano Silver will get your teeth cleaner. I don't know about this particular toothpaste, but certainly Silvers and Antimicrobial works very well. It's a very potent antimicrobial agents. But of course the question is, if you've got something which is so effective, you've gotta work out how to use it sensibly, how to use it wisely. And that seems to be what's lacking at the moment. Were you surprised to see products like this start to show up? Yes, being particularly surprised products like this, where you're putting Nana Silver into something where it can definitely get into the body, either with toothpaste in this form or in kid's toys. Kids pacify as even. It's almost as if manufacturers like kids in a toy store at the moment they got this, this new technology Nana Silver and they're just putting it everywhere. There are so excited about it, but nobody's really thinking about the long term consequences of that. Maynard put the Nano silver tooth based on his rapidly growing list of nanotechnology products already on store shelves. More than 1/3 of them about 260 so far, are made with nano silver. Maynard keeps a few on his desk. This is perhaps my favorite. We have Benny the Bear, who is, Ah, soft plush toy that has, Ah, on inside phone, which is impregnated with Nana Me to size silver particles. And here's some socks. Same idea. Ultra fresh business socks, which contain against silver nanoparticles. The idea is they kill the bugs that lead to smelly feet. This one principle, you can wear these for longer without developing antisocial habits. Eventually, however, you're going to want to wash those socks. Researchers at Arizona State University found that after about four or five washings, most brands start to leak their nano silver particles, which go out with water. And, of course, nano silver toothpaste is largely going down the drain. Then what for most communities in the country, the wastewater treatment plant is the first entity Teoh received these materials. That's Cal Bayer Anderson Health Sciences, tracking nanotechnology for the Environmental Defense Fund she's been hearing from people who manage sewage plants who want to know what Nano silver might do. Toe wastewater treatment bacteria. Beneficial bacteria are very important to this process. They degrade or break down organic constituents that are present in the waste water. If you're introducing something like Nano silver, which is any bacterial, and you wind up killing the good bacteria that will essentially put a halt to the treatment process. Silver in its regular form, can show up in wastewater from photo developing and metal working shops. Federal regulations limit how much can be emitted into rivers, lakes and bays, and for good reason. Silver, while largely benign for humans, is highly toxic to many freshwater fish. George Kimbrel at the nonprofit International Centre for Technology Assessment, filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency asking that nano silver products be treated as pesticides. Nano silver is quite a bit more toxic, 45 times more by one study than bulk silver, almost like a silver on steroids. And we don't know what that will do to the bottom of the food chain to ecosystems in general. And there's another concern that nano silver in the environment could create a threat to human health. Andrew Mayne, Art of the Woodrow Wilson Center says widespread use could lead to resistant strains of bacteria. Now, at the moment, Silver is one of our last event defenses against some of these bugs thes thes microbes that are resistant to many other forms of antimicrobial agents. If we give the secret of our last best defense away silver, it really leaves us with very little else to start killing some of these harmful agents. It is literally the silver bullet. It literally is the silver bullet, and I think we've gotta use it judiciously, Maynard says. All this points to a glaring need form or study into potential environment and health risks and someone Capitol Hill agree. Congress is working this summer to reauthorize funding for the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The initiative, managed by the White House Office of Science and Technology, coordinates about $1.3 billion of nanotech research among a dozen federal agencies. However, only about 3% of that money went to health and environment research. Tennessee Democrat Bart Gordon, who chairs the House Science Committee, thinks that should be much higher. I don't think they've done enough, although to their credit they have doubled the funding in the last couple of years, but more needs to be done and we're gonna hold their feet to the fire. Gordon says he wants society to realize the benefits of nanotechnology. He's worried that development of good products could be stifled if the first products to market strike the public as unsafe. He points to the example of genetically modified crops. They were put out there before there was really good research, which then could give the public confidence. And there were a black cloud over to some extent. I want to get that research so that we can get that public acceptance where it should be for nanotechnology so that it can help us with energy, independence and and so many other ways. There are indications that Nano Silver may be starting to lose its shine. For some businesses. Consider the case of Benny the Bear. You remember the Nano's stuffed animal we met earlier? Been. He's been getting some good publicity lately. Well, this looks like a regular stuffed animals, you know it does, but it actually is a very special little guy. He's the first adding microbial bear. So we say, for kids with allergies, what that translates to Let's get one out. Here you go But Benny's makers do not like the kind of publicity Nano Silver has been getting. Roy Sharda is a partner in Pure Plushy, the Chicago business that created Benny. We have used Nano silver in the past. There's a lot of speculation. Eyes, too, how much nano silver technology is accepted. And, uh, any time you see controversy, you try to sort of avoid it. Sharda has stopped using Nano silver in Benny the Bear. He says there are just too many questions about the material and how government might regulated. But Sharda still believes in nanotechnology and thinks that in the long run, the Nano silver dispute will be good If it brings more research. I think it's better to have this phase of controversy and have the truth come out than the other way around. Call it the silver lining in the nano silver products. Yes, commercialization may be getting ahead of needed research, but putting these products in the public's hands could start an overdue national conversation on nanotechnology, with more people asking the big questions about thes tiny materials for living on earth. I'm Jeff Young in Washington. In the coming weeks, you'll hear more about the small stuff with big potential in our Siri's. Let's get small. But if you can't wait for more information on nanotechnology, go to our website ella we dot org's.