In the Federal Register, the agency said that it will no longer permit the obstruction of safety evaluations by allowing firms to hide behind age-old claims of business secrecy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, had told Congress earlier this year that the heavily lobbied “confidential business information” protection was keeping the agency’s risk assessors from obtaining vital data on health and safety concerns of chemical substances awaiting approval. Thousands of chemicals were not properly evaluated because of the withheld information, she told lawmakers.

This action has real-life implications.

Photo from Green Earth Technologies

Earlier today AOL News published a long story on scientists in the U.S., Canada, South America and elsewhere pleading with the EPA not to approve the use of an oil dispersant that contains unidentified and possibly untested nanoparticles.

The company, Green Earth Technologies, insisting its product is safe for use in the Gulf, says that federal law allows it to conceal information on the composition of the nano-dispersant and precisely what nanoparticles it contains because it’s confidential business information.

That protection may no longer exist, at least within the EPA. Other federal safety agencies such as OSHA and the Food and Drug Administration apparently still allow such corporate obfuscation.

Richard Denison, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, says he rarely gets to use the words “elegant” and “Federal Register notice” in the same sentence, but that’s how he describes the long-sought-after change in how EPA will handle corporate information.

“Yesterday’s notice is the latest in a series of actions the new leadership at EPA has taken to make good on much-neglected aspect of its mission,” wrote Denison.

In announcing the new policy, EPA said it took the action “to promote public understanding of potential risks by providing understandable, accessible, and complete information on potential chemical risks to the broadest audience possible.”

A careful legal interpretation of the long maligned, but vital Toxic Substance Control Act convinced the agency that it could provide more valuable information to the public by identifying data where information may have been claimed and treated as confidential in the past–but is not, and was not, in fact entitled to confidentiality under TSCA.

EPA says it expects to begin reviews of confidentiality claims — both newly submitted and existing claims on August 25, 2010.

Click here for the entire Federal Register report.

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Photo by All Word News.UK

“Because the nanopatch requires neither a trained practitioner to administer it nor refrigeration, it has enormous potential to cheaply deliver vaccines in developing nations,” said lead researcher Mark Kendall, a professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

Being both painless and needle-free, Kendall said in a statement released by the university, the nanopatch offers hope for those with needle phobia, as well as the potential to improve the vaccination experience for young children.

Kendall told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the nanopatch is designed to place vaccines directly into the skin where a “rich body of immune cells are,”  unlike the needle, which injects vaccines into muscles with few immune cells. As a result, the vaccines delivered via nanopatch are more effective, he said.

The nanopatch targeted cells found in a narrow layer just beneath the skin surface. The patch was “much smaller than a postage stamp and comprised of several thousands of densely packed (nanosized) projections invisible to the human eye,” the professor said.

In tests on laboratory mice, Kendall and his team dry-coated influenza vaccine onto the projections, which are nanosized delivery points, and then applied the patches to the animals’ skin for two minutes, all it took for the full dosage to be delivered.

“Our result is 10 times better than the best results achieved by other delivery methods,” being developed elsewhere around the globe, he said.  “And by using far less vaccine we believe that the Nanopatch will enable the vaccination of many more people,” Kendall said.

“When compared to a needle and syringe a nanopatch is cheap to produce and it is easy to imagine a situation in which a government might provide vaccinations for a pandemic such as swine flu to be collected from a (pharmacist) or sent in the mail,” said the announcement.

“Our next step is to prove the effectiveness of nanopatches in human clinical trials,” he said.

Here’s a link to the version I wrote for AOLnewa.com.

These words did not come from President Obama, but rather were the conclusion of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and 12 leading civilian experts recruited to examine what the White House-run National Nanotechnology Initiative had accomplished since President Clinton created it a decade ago.

I dutifully reported that incestuous praise today on AOL News. It was only appropriate to give the federal nano gurus equal time, since last month I wrote eight stories on what many public health experts saw as dangerous shortcomings in the government’s programs to identify and regulate the safety of these wondrous atomic concoctions.

Here is a link to what I wrote today and another to the series of nano stories AOL posted last month.

The 71-page report by the scientific advisors said that unless the U.S. doubles the billions it’s spending on nano, China, South Korea and the European Union will wipe out America’s commercial edge, among other things.

Needless to say, the federal nano gang at the White House, NNI and elsewhere in the government is not happy with my reporting. They expressed their displeasure at length today in an Op-ed that AOL eagerly ran.

The White House advisors also shared their annoyance by issuing “talking points” to nano folks – in and out of the government – on how to respond to what I wrote.

Sensitive little group isn’t it?

Prof. Andrew Maynard

Personally, I think the world would be a bit better off if these policy makers focused more on determining whether nanoparticles are harmful or not before they urge everyone to fill the marketplace with them.

And, if all this isn’t enough to bore the hell out of everyone, here are more exciting views on this sparring match from one of the nation’s leading nano-safety proponents – Prof. Andrew Maynard.

Photo by nanotech companies

The infinitesimal particles are at the core of a burgeoning new industry that has scores of businesses lining up outside laboratory doors, eager to apply nanotechnology to commercial projects, from cosmetics to antibacterial clothing to targeted delivery of pharmaceuticals.

But many scientists have raised serious questions about the health and environmental dangers posed by nanoparticles  and the British study could elevate those concerns to a new plane. However, other researchers insist the conclusions are off-base an dnot relevant when assessing human health risks.

Vital organs and systems in the human body are protected by specialized barriers. The blood-brain barrier, for example, blocks the release of large molecules and other substances from the blood stream into cerebrospinal fluid.

The British scientists – Patrick Case and 15 other researchers from the University of Bristol – studied the ability of nanoparticles to penetrate past such barriers.

What they found was that nanoparticles used medically to target the delivery of drugs against cancer and other diseases can damage the DNA of cells without actually crossing the cellular barriers in the body.

This opens a very wide door to new safety concerns.

The study, conducted on cells grown in culture, suggests that the indirect effects of nanoparticles on cells should be weighed when evaluating their safety.

In an abstract of the study published online this week in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers reported that the nanoparticles did not pass through the barrier to cause the DNA damage, but in fact generated molecules within the barrier cells that were then transmitted to the cells behind the barrier.

The amount of DNA damage in the cells behind the protective barrier was similar to the DNA damage caused by direct exposure to the nanoparticles.

Almost two decades ago, when French cosmetic designers were the first to use nanosized material in face powers and creams, some skeptics raised concerns about the nanomaterial entering the blood system and eventually passing into the brain.

Scientists for the cosmetic said the brain-blood barrier would prevent such contamination. Perhaps, based on Case’s work, that issue deserves another look.

NEW:

It didn’t take long for Case’s study to draw criticism from other scientists that faulted its conclusions and side the word of the British team had little relevance to human exposure risk.  .

Here is a link to a critical article in Science Now.

Little is known about the health effects of these inventions.

“We have no idea how some of these structures interact in biological systems — nor do we understand the potential toxicological risks they impose on our environment,”  says James Bonner, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology at North Carolina State University

An Environmental Protection Agency science panel began a four-day hearing Tuesday in Washington examining the hazards associated with the odor-ending nanosilver.

Those concerns will also be underscored this week when Swiss scientists release what they say is the first comprehensive study on the escape of silver nanoparticles from clothing to rivers, streams and lakes, often major sources of drinking water.

Textile manufactures are cranking out millions of pairs of sweet-smelling bras, panties, socks, undershirts and other clothing that are spiked with nanosilver, advertising the garments as containing odor and germ-fighting material.

In the Swiss study, being published this week in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology, the scientists measured the nanosilver particles released from a variety of brands of socks made from different textiles, finding that most of were relatively large and that as much as 35 percent of the total silver came out of the fabrics during the first wash.

Most filters in water treatment plants are unable to screen out the nano-sized particles of silver, which may be no thicker than 1/50,000^th the width of a human hair.

“These results have important implications for the risk assessment of silver textiles and also for environmental fate studies of nanosilver,” said Dr. Bernd Nowack and his colleagues from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

For decades, scientists have shown that silver in many forms has great medicinal effects, including being toxic to most bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

While silver is useful, there is growing concern that no one has yet completed, or, at least published research on whether nano-sized silver in the water may harm the environment or the people and animals who drink it.

While this study dealt with a clothes hamper of socks, to understand the potential size of the problem, consider that there are thousands of individual items being sold that tout nanosilver as an antibacterial agent.

The Internet is filled with hundreds of products from underwear for astronauts, campers and hikers, to thongs, frilly bras and hospital scrubs.

The anti-odor, anti-bacterial clothing is selling well around the world and new lines of products are being added almost weekly.

The Internet offers page after page of the latest nanosilver products for sale. One clothing website based in Wisconsin described its presentation as “scantily clad models who we can be sure smell as good as they look.”

But it’s infants and children that give marketers their biggest payday.  They count on new parents’ fears of germs to sell an almost endless list of products that will kill the bugs on things their offspring may put in their mouths.

Plush dog with antimicrobial nanosilver

But nanosilver products didn’t slink quietly into the marketplace.

The Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung had a Hollywood-style gala to launch its “Silver Wash” clothes washer with a nanosilver-coated drum that it said it would kill over 600 different bacteria.

Most of the high end women’s and design magazines had slick ads proclaiming that the ‘Silver Wash’ “released 400 billion nanoscale silver particles during the wash and rinse cycles and achieved 99.9 percent sterilization of bacteria.’’ It boast leaving behind a residual silver coating on clothing “to keep it smelling fresh for up to 30 days.”

So when you think about  what’s going out with the rinse water,  think bigger than a few pair of socks.

Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, warned Congress last year that hundreds of products with nanoparticles are on the market, with three to five new ones added every week.

“What we know at the moment is that silver does have the potential to cause environmental harm if released in sufficient quantities, and that silver used as nanoparticles might exacerbate the problem in some circumstances,” he told me this weekend.

He is concerned that current research won’t provide a clear picture of potential risks presented by nanoscale silver for some time.

“And it’s not even clear whether the right research is being funded – in other words, there’s a disconnect between where we need to be on nanosilver, and what we are doing to get there,” added Maynard, who’s at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In June 2008, The International Center for Technology Assessment and a coalition of consumer, health, and environmental groups filed a petition with the EPA demanding the agency use its pesticide regulation authority to stop the sale of hundreds of consumer products now using nano-sized versions of silver.

No one involved in the nano safety fight could tell me of any products that EPA pulled off the market. But, under powers of the almost unpronounceable Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, EPA declared Samsung’s “Silver Wash” a pesticide.

The EPA’s nano Scientific Advisory Panel will be evaluating statements on the “Assessment of Hazard and Exposure Associated with Nanosilver.”

The panel will hear from scientists, toxicologists, public health specialists and representative of the nanosilver industry.

Here are three of the many topics they are likely to debate, or at least consider as they ponder what regulations this multi-billion dollar industry needs and will accept:

• An antibacterial agent like nanosilver is a pesticide. It kills bugs.

• Not only does nanosilver kill harmful bacteria, but it doesn’t distinguish between good and bad bacteria.  This means it will also kill microbes that water treatment plants need to operate and that we need to live.

• The potential hazards associated with exposure to nano particles – both metals and chemicals – are likely to differ from the same substance that hasn’t been reduced in size.

The most common reply when nano scientists and marketers are asked about the safety of their almost invisible creations is something like: “Well, we know the toxicity limits for (insert chemical of your choice) Why should we test it just because we’ve made it smaller?”

Many toxicologists and public health specialists disagree.

“Unfortunately, that’s the mantra,” said PEN scientist Maynard. “One size fits all is not a viable concept when it comes to assessing risk or toxicity of any substance.”

Dr. Jennifer Sass, senior scientist and nano specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council has long been concerned about the toxicity of nano particles.

In material she submitted to the EPA panel, Sass said that unless multiple, well-designed studies demonstrate otherwise, nanosized material should not be automatically declared safe.

Sass, who for years has studied EPA and industry’s testing for children’s exposure to toxic material, says that NRDC is particularly concerned about exposures to infants and children through the use of nanosilver and other nano-chemical antimicrobials.

Many who will attend the hearings or who submitted testimony believe passionately that no new government regulations are needed.

For example, some groups that sell cosmetics or nutritional or medical supplements made with silver are adamantly against EPA imposing any controls on silver products. They insist that nutritional supplements containing nanosilver have never been demonstrated to pose any threat to the environment.

Other federal and state agencies will be watching the outcome of the EPA’s effort.

Almost everyone sees the enormous actual and potential benefit to medicine, engineering and a hundred other fields from the advances in nanotechnology.  But many people in government, public health and the nano industry worry that there must be some mechanism to weigh the benefits against what could be an enormous risk.

In its research plan, the agency says it will identify producers and users of nanomaterial, determine what happens when it is released into the air, water and soil, and examine the effects of exposure to the subatomic particles on people, animals and crops.

However, some grizzled EPA scientists ¬– veterans of earlier bloody wars with corporations zealously guarding the composition of their laboratory concoctions — worry about whether EPA will have the political will and stamina to demand and get enough details on these man-made particles to actually evaluate their safety.

The report released yesterday had been ready for months, according to one scientist involved in its release.

“Everyone wanted their fingerprints on it so it went from desk to desk and office to office. It was like the days of the Bush administration, but the difference is this was finally released with only minimal weakening,” said the headquarters veteran, who declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Those who have studied the potential for detrimental health effects say they are most concerned with devices called single- and double-walled carbon tubes and the graphite-like fullerenes or buckeyballs.

“There are many other nanotructures that the government should be worried about,” said a newly hired EPA policy analyst  who recently came from industry. “We know that we are dealing with commercial products worth perhaps billions and the pressure to stymie our research and that of other agencies will be enormous,”

He said he and others involved with nano believe that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama White House are both publicly and privately behind ensuring the safety of nanotechnology.

“But we know things change when the pressure is turned up. Look at all the Democrats who just voted against the government option in health insurance. Who would have predicted that?” he asked.

The agency has received hundreds of letters, petitions and appeals for it to study the nanoparticles that are being used in hundreds of consumer products already on the market and thousands more in the pipeline. Ultraprotective sunscreens, bacteria-fighting underwear, medicines, appliances and scores more are just a sample of what’s out there.

Reading the public docket, it’s clear that much of the angst among  environmental activists and the public health community centers on nanosilver, which is already being heavily used as an antimicrobial agent. Also on most lists are  zinc oxide, carbon nanotubes, carbon black, titanium and a variety of fibers and clay made from nanomaterial.

Pressure from inside EPA and elsewhere had been demanding action  early in the past Bush Administration, especially against carbon nanotubes which are used in vehicles, sports equipment and electronics. The handful of animal health studies that have been completed on these structures has shown asbestos-like disease and other serious health implications.

But many of EPA’s earlier efforts sputtered to a stop soon after being announced.

For example,  last June, EPA established significant new use rules for nanocarbon that would have required laboratories who were using the tubes in new products to notify EPA at least 90 days before work commenced . This so that EPA could evaluate the proposed use and, if needed, prohibit or restrict the activity.

In August, bucking to outside pressure, EPA revoked the new rules.

EPA says the new nano program will examine all aspects of nanomaterials in the environment, from their manufacture and use to their disposal or recycling.

Inventions and new applications fly off laboratory benches and out of clean rooms faster than patents can be filed or danger to public health even assessed.

Illustration by Gary Quinn GF78

Globally, sales of nano-based products have reached $32 billion, according to Brianna Sandoval, a Harvard Law School researcher.

The number of products engineered via nanotechnology or containing nanomaterials has been steadily increasing, with the largest increases coming in the areas of cosmetics, food packaging, and dietary supplements, Sandoval reports in the upcoming issue of Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety.

The responsibility for regulating of this gee-whiz world of miracles is falling on the desks of scientists and paper-pushers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies.

There are some very notable exceptions, but for the most part adverse reactions from these often breathtaking, new subatomic concoctions don’t appear to occupy the thoughts of many of the scientists creating the new products.

The mantra that’s being shouted from laboratory roofs seems to be: “Why worry? We’re just taking chemicals we’ve been using for decades and making them smaller.”

That absurd contention is being gently challenged, at best.

In Sandoval’s study, which was published by the Institute of Food Technologists, she points out that research shows that materials engineered at the nanoscale level can exhibit fundamentally different properties from the same material in its customary form.

The scientists and public health experts in FDA are not alone on this new battleground. EPA is grappling with the possible hazards of nano pesticides and antimicrobial chemicals.

At the USDA, two scientists that I talked with this week say they know that they will be sucked up into a maelstrom of controversy over “not-too-highly-publicized” plans to use nanoized material in food seeds and animal feed.

And what about at OSHA, an agency where they should be apprehensive about the safety of not only the scientists creating the material, but workers mixing and packing it and the janitors cleaning up after them?

“Almost nothing is being done,” one 25-year-veteran told me Wednesday. “It’s like there was never a change of administrations. The feeling here is that industry doesn’t want anyone setting standards for anything to do with this nanomaterial.”

Based on interviews that I’ve done over the past four months, it is vividly apparent that the official marriage of food and nano is imminent. But the parties have  been living in sin, with little if any oversight from FDA and the gang of safety watchdogs.

Sandoval says that it seems that FDA’s funding crisis will continue for the foreseeable future and will continue to prevent the agency from meeting its

evolving regulatory responsibilities as efficiently and effectively as possible.

“Ultimately, the agency has managed to maneuver through the minefields created by new technologies in the past; it will certainly be able to do so again,” she said.

Unfortunately, the promise of technology usually goes hand in hand with new problems, and nanotechnology is no exception, she adds.

In an attempt to head off some of the pithy comments accusing me of being a fear monger, let me admit that, in this case, I am.

Photo from U/Michigan

I don’t think most of us realize how perilous our water supply is.

We may know that the water we drink is often laced with minute amounts second-hand pharmaceuticals: estrogen, antibiotics, and dozens of other meds. In reality, they are so heavily diluted that there is no apparent risk.

Envision a thimble of poison in a swimming pool of water, the EPA offers as an example.  Low dose, but, is anyone studying it?

But what about the growing amount of nano-scale material that is going down our drains? Nanosilver washed from clothing and bedding and the drums of nano-coated washers and driers?

EPA admits that today virtually none of the nation’s public water filtration systems can prevent these minute heavy metal particles, as well as other nano-ized substances, from getting into our drinking water. But, EPA says it hasn’t studied the possible health effects.

If you want to get an idea of how widespread the contamination of our water supply is, here are two links.  The first is an EPA list of contaminants  in drinking water.

The second is an investigation by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg that says, “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected at a Cost in Suffering .”

Duhigg reports that in the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

On the other side of the world, Bao Anh of the Vietnamese paper Thanh Nien reported that more than 100 people living in a commune near Hanoi have been killed by cancer  caused by pesticides from nearby farms fouling the river and community wells.

The U.S. has its own problems with farm chemicals. Can you say atrazine?

It’s one of agricultures most heavily used herbicides, and EPA says that it has been found in high levels throughout the country and has done little or nothing about it.

For more than two decades, battles have been fought within the EPA and the European Union and among their advisory panels over the danger of atrazine.  The agency and the manufacturer insist that the herbicide sold by the Swiss- based Syngenta is safe. Many toxicologists and public and worker health advocates, say they have the proof that it’s not.

“Those most at risk are people living in farming communities where the water supplies, both underground and in reservoirs, are often heavily contaminated with atrazine,” says a weary scientist in EPA’s pesticide office.

“And it’s these farmers and their families who are least likely to raise hell about it because it’s great for crop growth,” he added.

We have the ingenuity to clean or stop most of this pollution of our water supply. What it takes is a willingness and money. Nether appears to be in abundance.

Five years ago, former Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois introduced the Water for the Poor Act of 2005, aimed at poor nations around the world. The State Department says that as of last year, because of Simon’s bill, more than 7.7 million people received improved access to safe drinking water.

Today, a spin-off of that bill stagnates in the Senate. The legislation – sponsored by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Tennessee’s Bob Corker of the Foreign Relations committee – is called Water for the Word Act. It would help provide 100 million people in third-world countries with sustainable access to clean water. But first it has to get to the full senate.

When I asked a lawyer on the Senate committee where the bill is stalled whether it contained anything to help the poor in the U.S. get clean water, he responded that the sign on the committee door said, “Foreign Relations.’’

(Soon I’ll move a little follow up that briefly examines what happens when we have no water, clean or dirty. And that’s well on its way to happening.)

Image from clipartheaven

But scientists for consumer and environmental groups say that while nanosized sun-blocking ingredients like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide now rub on clear instead of white, very few of the engineered materials have been tested for safety.

The limited data that is available shows that the particle’s small size makes them more able to enter the lungs, pass through cell membranes, and possibly penetrate damaged or sun-burnt skin, says a report issued today by Consumers Union, Friends of the Earth and the International Center for Technology Assessment.

The report urges that consumers be wary of sunscreens that contain nanomaterials.

In 2007, Consumer Reports tested sunscreens containing nanomaterials and found no correlation between their presence and sun protection and that “neither nanoscale zinc nor titanium oxides provide a clear and consistent performance advantage over other active ingredients.”

“Adding nanoparticles to sunscreens means adding an unnecessary potential risk to our health and to the environment, with no significant gain. Why take the chance?” asked Michael Hansen, co-author of the report and senior scientist at Consumers Union

To make matters worse, most consumers have no idea they’re coating their skin and their children’s skin with material that hasn’t been tested for safety.

George Kimbrell, a lawyer for the Center for Technology Assessment says no labeling is required for any product that contains nanomaterials, including sunscreens.

He adds: “We need the government to regulate these novel products, including requiring labeling if they are approved so that consumers can make informed choices about what they place on their bodies and their families.”

Nanoparticles are measured in nanometers; one nanometer is billionth of a meter. One nanometer is roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Here is a link to a PDF of the report”   FoE_CU_ICTA_Nano-sunscreens_Report

Apparently not so.

William Norwood at IFT science conference

William Norwood, president of nanoAgri Systems, said the Environmental Protection Agency told him that he wasn’t permitted to market his company’s new nanosilver, antibacterial packaging.

“This just doesn’t make any sense at all,“ Norwood told me at a recent international nanotechnology science conference convened by the Institute of Food Technologists.

Holding court at a table near the front of the conference room, Norwood ticked off recent reports of dangerous outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

He explained that extensive tests of his company’s nano coating resulted in a dramatic reduction of — and, in some tests, complete elimination of – the most virulent food-borne pathogens.

He said he couldn’t get a clear answer from the EPA on why he couldn’t move forward with the process his company developed.

Twice since the June gathering of thousands of food scientists in Anaheim, I called EPA to find out why Norwood’s product was being held off the market.

I’m still waiting for an official answer, but people in the agency who admit they don’t know the specifics of Norwood’s plight have an opinion. They tell me it may have been prompted by actions of public health activists who demanded that the EPA handle nanosilver products under its pesticide rules. The agency has been slow to react.

“Nano is now a fear word and restrictions haphazardly applied will stifle many needed advancements that can improve health and other vital areas,” Norwood said.

“Nanotechnology isn’t being given a chance by federal regulators and environmental activists,’’ he added, rapping his fist on the table.

During his formal presentation, the head of the Virginia-based company explained that the Defense Department alone wastes hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of spoiled or bacteria-contaminated fruit and vegetables that are useless and dangerous when they reach the troops.

Norwood told the scientists that he began working with nanomaterial as a way of protecting his business. Too many of his clients were being forced out of business because salmonella and other bacteria had infected large amounts of the fresh vegetables they were shipping.

“Nano science needs to be given a fair chance,’’ he said.

Norwood’s frustrations are understandable. And people that I spoke to last week at the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA privately said that Norwood’s coating could be of great value.

But, they offered, Norwood may have run into a bureaucratic buzz saw over at EPA. The agency is receiving significant criticism because it hasn’t done more to monitor and regulate nanotechnology.

The fact that Norwood’s process uses nanosilver particles may have made him a more likely target.

The frenzied marketing of more frivolous products containing nanosilver particles quickly reached absurd levels this decade.

Magazine and television ads touted the “miracle anti-bacterial agent and odor-killer” available in nano-infused bras, panties, athletic supporters, socks, pants and scores of other products.

It didn’t take long for environmental scientists to find community water treatment plants loaded with nanosilver washed from these clothing items.

Most filtration systems can’t stop these nano-sized particles from entering the water supply. More importantly, very little research has been done on the health effects from the resulting exposure to humans and animals.