News

The emerging policy debate about nanotechnology has tended to focus on the immediate health and environmental risks of nanoparticles. This is understandable – everyone cares about safety. But in the economic and political rush...

FOEA and others have long been concerned that the chance of greater sun damage to skin is not the only potential health risk posed by nano-sunscreens. Now a new test tube study has found that nanoparticles of...

The Australian newspaper reports on the worst damage to the Great Barrier reef ever caused by a ship. The 100,000 tonne coal carrier the Shen Neh 1 “pulverised” a 3km section of the reef in...

Macquarie University’s Professor Brian Gulson reported last week that isotope-labelled zinc from nano-sunscreens penetrates healthy adult skin and reaches the blood stream and urine of human test subjects. The study results undermine the Therapeutic...

In Australia’s first nanotechnology protest, Friends of the Earth Australia took its concerns about L’Oréal’s use of unsafe, untested nanoparticles to the catwalk of the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival. L’Oréal, the world’s biggest cosmetics company, is...

For the first time, researchers have shown that nanoparticles can cross the human placenta, meaning that they could be transferred from mothers to unborn babies. The study showed that plastic nanoparticles up to 240nm in...

For the first time, an Australian regulator is proposing to regulate nanomaterials used in hundreds of cosmetics, sunscreens, clothes, paints and industrial chemicals. NICNAS wants to hear what you think about its plans to manage the...

Peter Melchett, policy director of the UK’s largest organic certifier the Soil Association, has written in the Daily Mail that public scepticism about nanofood should be heeded, and that nanotechnology should be kept out of...

In a new report, the Science and Technology Committee of the UK House of Lords criticises industry secrecy surrounding the use and development of nanofoods. It also warns that the health risks of nanofoods remain poorly...

FoEA has joined 170 NGOs from over 36 countries world-wide in calling on governments to amend the technology transfer text at Copenhagen to include an explicit commitment to precaution, and to prevent promotion of...