Forget BPA and asbestos, watch out for silver nanoparticles

Especially around your junk. Now, silver nanoparticles are one of these technologies where the benefits have been proven (they’re antibacterial when mixed in fabrics, for instance) but not the risks, and there’s a good chance that there are serious risks. When bringing a new product like this to market, usually the entity bringing it has to show proof that it’s not harmful, rather than give it the benefit of the doubt and wait till someone gets harmed.

That doesn’t seem to have happened with nanoparticles. I’m not usually one to get up in arms about possible chemical scares (I’m a big fan of both Aspartame and MSG) but this seems pretty legit: the widespread use of nanoparticles in products that have contact with skin, water systems, other chemicals and so on is so new that there can’t possibly have been time for rigorous testing of possible effects. Even companies that tout themselves as “green” or “organic” are using the tech, which is more an indicator of the weight of a label like “green” than of the safety of the product.