Today I was leafing through my copy of This Week - a guilty-pleasure, news-lite weekly that synthesizes the hard work of our nation's journalists into a single, reductionist format, when I came upon this item:
Nanoparticles in everyday products such as sunscreen and toothpaste could invade and damage brain tissue. Nanotechnology, the science of the very small, is the source of many of this year's technological innovations. In the latest generation of sunscreens, for example, tiny particles of zinc or titanium block the sun's rays. But nanomaterials are so new to the medical landscape that scientists still aren't sure what repercussions they might have. In one study on mice, the tiny grains seeped through the bloodstream into fragile brain tissue, causing permanent damage.
Now, typically I take all news from the cutting edge of health science with a nanoparticle of salt. If, five years after the initial study, scientists are still in agreement over the deleterious or beneficial properties of some substance, I'll get with the times, but until then it all goes in my "Huh!" file of mildly interesting information.
However, it's not every day that I'm told a common household product has the potential to rot my precious few neurons. Chip away at my liver, lungs, and kidneys if you must, but hands off my gray matter!
Perplexed and not a little concerned about this revelation, I did some hard-hitting investigation of my own [okay, a Google search]. This is apparently not a completely new issue. Friends of the Earth Australia has been conducting an awareness project since at least 2004, and their site provides a basic compendium of the little academic research that has been conducted to this point.
There seems to be little question that the presence of any significant amount of nanoparticles in the bloodstream is a bad thing - by dint of their wee proportions, they subvert our otherwise trustworthy blood-brain barrier, and nobody wants teeny flecks of zinc camping out in his or her hippocampus. The real question is whether or not human skin provides an effective barrier to full absorption, and on that count, we still don't know enough. The EU has apparently begun work on a more thorough research project, but a full accounting will not be forthcoming for several years. In the meantime, there has been no moratorium whatsoever, and we're all left crossing our fingers! To make matters worse, companies are not required to disclose the presence of nanoparticles in their products. So, while some companies view nanotechnology as a selling point and are only too happy to insert the prefix "nano" into their product titles, others maintain a stony silence. Luckily, FoE has published a guide containing a list of 116 products for which there is some significant evidence of nano-properties [begins on p. 20]. Unfortunately for women, the vast majority of these products are cosmetics. Yet the list in no way claims to be comprehensive.
In sum, whether nanoparticles prove to be capitalist science's next great achievement or, in fact, a Communist plot to sap and impurify the precious bodily fluids of the American people remains to be seen. But, since our lack of knowledge has not yet impeded the over-the-counter sale of these products, I thought I'd give everyone a heads up. Maybe some of the more civic minded among you might even see fit to ask our politicians why they are so indifferent to the integrity of our brains. At the very least, if you use these products, it is a good idea to avoid applying them to any areas of scratched or blemished skin.
Update - Thanks to Jiminy Cricket for pointing out the non-functioning nature of my list link. He's provided a stable one in the comments.