Consumer fear. Is it driving nanotech underground?

Consumer fear. Is it driving nanotech underground?

Eur Activ article: “Finding reliable information about products on the European market that contain nanomaterials is becoming increasingly difficult, according to high-level experts addressing a meeting of consumer groups from the EU and US at a conference in Brussels (10 June)” – which I tried to find a url for, but can’t sorry.

So why is this….

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) at the Woodrow Wilson Center, has collated an inventory of about 800 products currently on the market which manufacturers claim contain nanotechnology.

Dr Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor to PEN, is concerned that controversy surrounding nanotechnology – some of which, he says, is not grounded in scientific fact – has led manufacturers to remove any mention of nanomaterials from their products.

He says in the EurActiv article that, “We have seen some companies drop the ‘nano’ claim while continuing to use nanotechnology. This suggests nanotechnology is going underground.”

This blog post comes because for sometime now I have been wondering, with the media coverage in Australia of nanotech being the next asbestos, or nanoparticle-containing sunscreens and cosmetics possessing unknown dangers whether the same might be happening in Australia.

More evidence

In the same EurActiv article, Harald Throne, researcher at the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway, searched a website run by a major international cosmetics company to estimate how many products contain nanotechnology. His search turned up 29 products in 2007, but when he repeated the exercise recently, he got zero hits.

Which?, the EU equivalent of Australia’s Choice, wrote to 67 cosmetics companies, including all of the main brands as well as smaller ones, asking them about their use of nanotechnology, what benefits they thought it brought and how they ensured product safety. Only 17 responded, and of these, just eight were willing to give up information about how they use nanotechnology.  Their report on this is called Small Wonder: Nanotechnology in Cosmetics (November 2008).

I don’t have evidence to suggest the same is happening in Australia, but the same companies sell the same products here…

In my opinion, most cosmetic advertising is simply marketing hype anyway.  Having nano on their label is another version of the “active ingredient” which is usually a molecule totally meaningless to most consumers, but is supposed to give scientific credibility to their product.  The same goes for the nano label: meaningless, but portraying scientific credibility, which may or may not be real.

If industry is truly trying to drop any marketing-linked association with nano, there is a danger, I think, of this only exacerbating the problem of facts getting lost in the hype – again.  This can only harm the debate and people’s ability to make informed choices.  I understand why companies might want to drop the nano label, but in the long run it might come back to bite them as in my experience from the GM and similar issues, this behaviour only makes people suspicious of products or brands and gets them wondering what industry is trying to hide.  In the context of nano safety, I continually here phrases such as thalidomide, DDT, asbestos, the same as I still do with GM foods.

EurActiv article again: Steffi Freidrichs, director of the Nanotechnology Industries Association, said the industry has been upfront about its use of promising new technologies and that companies go to great lengths to ensure products are safe.  She says, “Varying definitions leads to claims that the industry is not open with information. But nobody is lying and nobody is misleading the public or authorities.”

She may be right, maybe companies do go to great lengths to ensure their products are safe and I don’t think they purposely arrange to lie, but unless you engage your customers and talk to them about this, how are they supposed to know the facts.  Having a young girl in a shopping centre who doesn’t even know what nanotechnology is, or can only repeat the sciency jargon written in the promotional brochure is pointless (and I have had been in both situations) , nor is it upfront or dialogue.  This is my Australian experience anyway.  It may not apply elsewhere.

My advice is to be open and willing to have a constructive dialogue with the public, especially your customers.  Explain the science, why you use it, how it works, where the risks are, how and if you manage those risks…and so on.  Trust in science is already lagging on a number of fronts. Don’t make it worse by going all clandestine on us.

Jason Major

Manager

GNTIS