Engineered Nanoparticles in Food – Are They Dangerous?
by Kris Heeter
Hub Pages
Copyright 2012 -Kris Heeter, Ph.D.
If you are like me, you may not have realized that nanoparticles have been added unknowingly to many of our consumer products and materials that food comes into contact with.
Engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) have been one of the fastest growing markets in the last decade. Nanomaterials can occur naturally, they can be produced unintentionally (e.g., some exhausts), and they can be created or engineered.
ENPs are now being used or will soon be used in everything from computers, medical products and procedures, food, and consumer products.
How small these engineered particles?
Nanotechnology has been defined by the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative as: “the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers”.
To put the size further into perspective:
- a red blood cell is roughly 7,000 nanometers wide
- a human hair is roughly 80,000 nanometers wide
- a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick
ENPs in consumer products are currently unregulated
As early as 2003, nanotechnology was recognized as a $7.6 billion dollar business.
By 2008, the industry exploded to more than $166 billion worth of consumer products were produced that contained nanoparticles. The market is expected to reach over $263 billion by this year (2012).
Nanoproducts can currently be found the following consumer products categories:
- cleaning solutions and agents
- antimicrobial products
- foam and waxes
- lubricants
- personal hygiene products
- food packaging
- clothing
- cosmetics
- sunscreens
- dietary supplements
- electronics
- sporting goods
The question is, do you know whether any of the above products you are currently using in these categories contain nanoparticles? Most likely not. The industry has been unregulated.
“It is unacceptable that the FDA continues to allow unregulated and unlabeled nanomaterials to be used in products consumers use every day…”
-Wenoach Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch
In recent weeks, a historic lawsuit has been filed against the FDA concerning the risks of nanotechnology in consumer products. The petition, filed by several groups, accuses the FDA for not responding in an adequate manner to a 2006 petition that demanded products containing nanoparticles be safety tested and labeled for consumers.
[CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE]
Source – http://krisheeter.hubpages.com/hub/Nanoparticles-in-Food-Dangerous
PN 
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Thank you for sharing =]
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February 29, 2012 at 6:57 PM
I am the author of this article and this article has been copied to this website without my consent.
To the owners of this website: I kindly ask that you please remove it immediately as it is a copyright violation. You must always have written consent of the author before considering reposting someone else’s article.
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April 4, 2012 at 6:34 PM
Wow. You want to hog this information all to yourself? Do you have ANY idea how you sound now? Look, somebody above even commented on how they really found this information USEFUL. Knowingthinker here even thanked me for sharing this. And you want to withhold information from people which would enlighten them about unprecedented assaults on their bodies? For what? For profit? For your ego? You’ve got some nerve.
Look, I’m not some little brat who’s going around not giving a shit about respect and stealing peoples’ work for my own selfish gain. I don’t remember that note at the top of your article (you may have just added it NOW), but even if i WAS there before, I didn’t reproduce your article in FULL, obviously – only in part.
I may have considered asking your permission but I probably didn’t have time so I only used a PART of your article (because I see people doing stuff like that ALL the time) but I guess that’s not good enough for you. I did my best to estimate if it was over 50% or not and I even included a link back to the original source, telling people in BIG LETTERS, to go there to read the REST of the article there, but you’d prefer to split hairs.
I’ll take it down as soon as I confirm if my use of your article constitutes “fair use” or not. If you want to split hairs, let’s split hairs. You have my word that as soon as I refresh my memory about the nitty gritty specifics concerning these laws, I will immediately take down YOUR WORK when/if I confirm for myself that I indeed am breaking these petty copywrite laws, which I sincerely think I am currently NOT breaking.
All formalities aside, for the record, I think you should be ashamed of yourself for having this attitude with respect to such crucial and unpopular information. I believe that your actions here, now, reflect an ignorance about the true scope of the problems we face as a species and as a planet. But that’s just my humble, stupid little opinion, isn’t it…. and who am I…. what do I know…
You fancy Ph.D. people… you’re really something else sometimes.
I ask that you have patience while I get to the bottom of this…
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April 5, 2012 at 11:55 AM