Washington, D.C. – The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to regulate a large class of consumer items made with microscopic “nanoparticles” of silver, part of a new but increasingly widespread technology that may pose unanticipated environmental risks.
The decision – which will affect the marketing of high-tech odor-destroying shoe liners, food-storage containers, air fresheners, washing machines and a wide range of other products that contain tiny bacteria- killing particles of silver – marks a significant reversal in federal policy.
It also creates an unexpected regulatory hurdle for the burgeoning field of nanotechnology, which involves the creation of materials just a few ten-thousandths the diameter of a human hair.
Until now, new products made with tiny germ-fighting particles of silver did not have to pass muster with regulators. That has concerned environmentalists and others who think that the growing amount of nanosilver washed down drains may be killing beneficial bacteria and aquatic organisms and may also pose risks to human health.
Most nanomaterials – which by definition are on the scale of a billionth of a meter – will remain outside the purview of the new EPA decision. But experts said the move is the first federal restriction to focus largely on nanotechnology, an emerging engine of technological innovation that promises major advances in materials science and medicine.
“This is something of a test case,” said Andrew Maynard, chief scientific adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
The Sharper Image, which until recently advertised as anti-microbial several products containing nanosilver, has dropped all such references.
Materials such as carbon or gold exhibit unconventional properties when manufactured on a nanoscale. That is largely because the tiny particles have relatively large surface areas for their small mass, which makes them very chemically reactive.
