Gallery: Nano-Products Are Everywhere

(March 24) -- It is almost impossible to determine how many products on the market today actually contain nanomaterials because advertisers, marketers and even manufacturers themselves are often less than truthful.

Distortions are found coming and going.

Some companies believe that adding "nano-something" to their brand name or marketing efforts will entice a certain demographic, even if their product doesn't contain the engineered particles.

On the other hand, there are manufacturers who use nanomaterial to increase the strength, versatility, value or taste of a product, but appear to have no interest in letting the public know what's in the goods they're buying.

New York-based Stuart Consumer Products Lab, for instance, sells something called Nano Coffee Energy tablets. But none of its online ads say what nanomaterial, if any, is in the product. Several e-mails to the company's office asking for that information didn't generate an answer.

Most nano-policy wonks parrot the latest numbers of commercially available products from an inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. As of this month, PEN -- a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts -- lists more than 1,100 nano-products in the marketplace. But director David Rejeski says that's probably only a fraction of what is really being sold.

PEN has just released an iPhone app called findNano, which urges users to photograph and submit information on a possible nanotech product for inclusion in its inventory. Rejeski says new items are being sent in every day.

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit public health and environmental research organization, has done its own comprehensive count of creams, lotions, sprays, washes, cosmetics, sundry personal care products and nutritional supplements on the market in the U.S. The organization says it has found close to 10,000 that contain nanoparticles. Although it has repeatedly relayed that information to the Food and Drug Administration, none of them has been tested for safety.

You can also buy nanoparticles off the shelf. Google ads teases an offer for 216 Carbon-60 nano Bucky Balls for $29.96, free shipping included. And if you want to make your own odor-killing socks, you can buy gallon jugs of potentially hazardous nanosilver from a New Jersey firm for $217.

Rejeski and other safety advocates worry as well about the burgeoning number of nano-containing products arriving in U.S. ports from manufacturers around the world. Venture capitalists say that while the U.S. leads in production of nano-products, followed by Japan, Germany, South Korea, China and other European Union states, that order may soon change.

A U.S. Commerce Department researcher who recently returned from a series of conferences in China says the country is "rushing like mad to capture its place in the nano market."

"They're using nano in hundreds and hundreds of consumer products, almost all for export, from electronics, animal feed and veterinary medication to nutritional supplements and people food," said the veteran Asia analyst, who asked that his name be withheld because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

It doesn't appear that there are any safeguards to ensure the safety of imported nano products, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of International Trade. "CBP is not aware of any regulations that we enforce for other agencies on this matter," says agency spokeswoman Erlinda Byrd.

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