Has anyone else wondered about the effects of nanoparticles in things like sunscreen? Do you trust the research and the claims re. safety ?
GM food as another concern of mine. I have so little faith in the ethics of large multinational companies.

Not really as I never use sunscreen and I grow or hunt most of what I eat.

Nanoparticles, nanotechnology and nanomachines are all slightly different things, and some have been in use for quite a while to date. http://www.foresight.org/nano/history.html Because a catchy name had not become well known it had not been a topic of discussion in any significant sense.

It is different today. Nanoparticles and nanotechnology are well known.

It's a growth technology and looks to impact our lives more in the future. How? Who knows? Like all technology it will bring some good and some bad. I don't believe it is possible to only excise the bad aspect of any technology, but it is possible to reduce it. Hopefully ethics rather than money will be a major factor in managing its expansion.

Where does one draw the line with technology? Is there any technology that we would roll back and remove from our society? The use of radioactive materials? These assist in treating cancer for example, and also cause cancer and related illnesses. Dynamite is another. It was very useful in building and construction but also in war. The inventor of dynamite being a certain Alfred Bernhard Nobel of course ... it seems a bit ironic they created the Nobel Peace prize after this inventor.

Yes I have concerns over this technology and believe it will become part of all our food chains if I hunt in a supermarket of in the boon docks of Australia. I myself personally (all three of me) am happy with the current level of technology we employ generally and perhaps wouldn't mind if it were rolled back a little. But I can't speak for future generations, who may well see great benefits in nanotechnology. The future is their world really, not mine.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/ ... 050802.asp


Yes Catey I have wondered about the effects of nanotechnology, since I heard a commentary on the radio similar to the link above a short while ago.

Its a concern the way new products seems to gallop out into general use courtesy of the multinationals before the risks of their long term use can be assessed.

Its compulsory for babies and small children in day care to be slathered in sunscreen each time they go outside, so often its applied twice a day.

Have you read about the plastic softening additive that has been banned in several countries but is still allowed to be used in specified quantities here?

Its suspected of creating some very sinister health issues indeed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4651391.stm

Airzone
We do have to be very wary, remember these things are not necessities.
Yes, it might find a cure for cancer, but its ingredients in the industialised world that are the main causes of cancer. I grew up in the bush in Africa with no electricity, and I was healthy and happy without any nano technology. DDT was the new wonder product and it was widely used then, probably in large amounts, and a couple of my dad's colleagues who used it, later died of cancer.

I agree with many of the points you make Airzone .How do we know though whether the benefits of this technology will outweigh the bad? I glanced at the screeds of info on the ethics of this subject . I find it amazinging that so little information was available to the average person out there before the plunge was made. No going back it seems , too much invested.

Time we all got involved in understanding the implications . With the exception of our friend Samuel most of us rely on supermarkets and put sunscreen on ourselves and the kids.
You do have concerns for those of us who aren't as fortunate Samuel ?

Christine , I have not heard of that additive to plastic but we are only now banning the use of a certain plastic lining that was in the lids and tins of baby foods . God only knows what poisons I have inadvertently fed my kids

Catey

I think that plastic you speak of is the phtalates component I was talking about. Heating baby bottles in the microwave is a bad idea to, and that happens all the time in day care centres.

Aussies take a pride in being tough but maybe when it comes ingesting chemicals its not such a good idea!

Catey,

I do have concerns for those who suffer or who may in the future suffer from skin cancer etc., and I and my family are fortunate that we do not seem to have the regressive gene that so many people of Celtic origin possess that makes them prone to skin cancer. None of my ancestors, that I know the some of the medical history of, have ever suffered from any form of cancer. The only ones that get slathered in sunscreen are my grand-children and one cannot blame their mothers for being cautious for they may have passed on the faulty genes.

The best thing for avoiding skin cancer is to have an adequate supply of melanin in the skin, hence the low incidence of such cancer in India and the East in general.

On food; one can grow nutritious food even in the smallest of backyards or on balconies and window boxes....everything doesn't have to come from the supermarket.

My doctor advised me to use it daily ( celtic heritage), but said he doesn't need it himself as he is Indian. He laughed out loud when I told him dark skinned children from Sudan were covered in it at day care centres.

I have skin problems as a legacy of too man sunburns as a child. So, call me crazy, but I use sunscreen on my dark-skinned nephew when we're at the beach. Even though he's a fairly dark American Indian he still gets sunburn. I always wear a hat when I go out and I use sunscreen on my arms.

I am suffering from panic exhaustion so I tend not to worry much now.

I'm a great believer in Murphy's law, its the thing that you never worry about that is most likely to happen.

Christine O wrote:

Airzone, We do have to be very wary, remember these things are not necessities. Yes, it might find a cure for cancer, but its ingredients in the industrialised world that are the main causes of cancer. I grew up in the bush in Africa with no electricity, and I was healthy and happy without any nano technology. ...

I support your sentiments. However, you use the word necessities. While it may not be necessary for you or me, some technology including nanotechnology will be necessary to allow others to live.

What you say about your early life being largely technology free yet a good life is said by many and generally I also was in a similar environment. But ... the use of technology in childbirth and early childhood has enabled many to live when fifty years ago they would have died. Are we breeding people who are not equipped to resist the diseases and problems of a natural life? Would it be a good ethical decision to allow babies to die during childbirth to improve the overall genetic toughness of the human race? I suspect you would disagree, but when you say nanotechnology is not a necessity to you, it maybe a necessity for the life of others. Are you saying that because you grew up without nanotechnology but had the advantage of technology and medicine until (say) 1980, that no one else is allowed to take advantage of technology you didn't? Of course not. But I think you will see the dilemma from that rhetorical question.

To the lucky ones, you and I, who didn't require much technology and so can say it wasn't necessary to us, it is an interesting theoretical puzzle. To a mother of a dying child, who could be saved by the use of some necessary (?), expensive, leading edge and complicated technology it is a much more difficult question. Is the mother in the best position to make that decision, a decision which will impact many people long after she herself dies?

So, it is difficult for me to say that nanotechnology should be discouraged because of the possible downsides. I may be condemning some people to death in effect. But by supporting nanotechnology I maybe encouraging the human race to develop weaker people who cannot survive without such technology. That technology then becomes essential to them and requires resources that could be perhaps better spent on prevention ... and so it goes on. There is no clear answer that I can see. All I can do is to live my own life as best/nicely/gently/ethically/honestly I can.

Wow, it isn't even 8am yet.

Airzone
There are many, many dying mothers and children, whose lives could be saved just by getting access to water.

This is not really about saving lives though, "the dying child" argument is used to sway opinion when the more uneducated majority, and I count myself in their number, suspect its safety is under threat. The rush to get new technology into production is mainly about money, because by comparison, most of us can live quite comfortably in the knowlege that millions of people die of malaria each year.

Nano technology is interesting and its good that it has been developed, I can understand that aspect, but more caution should be used, before applying it willy nilly .

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... laria.html

I thought Murphy's Law is, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." There are millions of things I've never worried about and I don't think they're likely to happen. It is sort of fun thinking about things I've never worried about. I've never worried about rabbits taking over the world. But, that might be because I'm not Australian.

But then there's Kelly's Law. "Anything the government warns you will happen, won't."

I've tried to remember when I lost all confidence in the government. It was after no standing room on the earth by the year 2,000. It was also after the inevitable nuclear holocaust and nuclear winter. But, it was before the invasion of the killer bees and the death of millions from the effective banning of DDT. Somewhere in there I quit being frightened and started giggling.

"The thing that happens to you is never the thing you have been worrying about", is often the case.

For instance a person might worry about money to excess, work long hours, and then their wife gets bored and runs off with another man, which is something they never worried about.

No its not really Murphy's law in its pure form however, its similar in concept.

Its something I've said to a member of my family who has OCD, on reflection, I don't know if it helped them or made them worse.

There is a saying which I can't find on the web. Something along the lines that as one looks down the road, one sees many rocks, stones and pebbles along that road. As one walks, one is able to walk around, over or even step across most of these obstacles. So one should not not walk the road because of fear of what will happen when one travels.

Of course, one of those rocks can tip over and crush you too. Every silver lining has a cloud.

And clouds can make hailstones, large ones Airzone.

By coincidence there was as discussion on tnis very topic on Radio National .last night sadly I fell asleep before this began. The intro however made mention that the nanoparticles in sunscreen migrated into the blood stream , on to the kidneys and urine !

By the way dark skin doesn't mean you won't get skin cancer and remember Bob Marley died from melanoma.

It’s commonly believed (among whities) that dark-skinned people do not tan/do not get sunburnt/do not develop melanoma. All these beliefs are wrong.

Black Africans, for example, do tan. In fact, they typically tan more readily than whites, though they also lose a tan more readily. And they are susceptible to sunburn, though less so than whites. And they certainly develop melanoma – at greater rates than less dark-skinned people like Arabs, Indians and East Asians, in fact.

What remains to be established is whether there exists for non-Europeans the same statistical correlation between childhood sunburn and later development of melanoma as undoubtedly exists for people of European descent. Nevertheless, as long as such a link remains possible, there is nothing at all anomalous in child-care centres applying sunscreen to children of all ethnic backgrounds.

Yes, there are unknown risks with using sunscreen; the effects of long-term regular use of sunscreen won’t fully unfold until the generation who were children in the 1980s reach late adulthood. But there are known risks with not using sunscreen, and the best estimate we can make at the moment is that the risks of not using sunscreen outweigh the risks of using it. We may have to re-evaluate that if more information comes to light.

I have issues with nanoparticles in sunscreen not sunscreen per se, Peregrinus. I read that the real fear is that these particlles will cross the blood brain barrier. There are serious ethical issues as we donot know how pervasive the use is of this technology or its outcomes .. like the Hadron collider we are like experimental mice in the hands of scientists