FDA Thinking About Monitoring Nanotech In Food

Who doesn't want a delicious mouthful of tiny robots or other ridiculously tiny, engineered objects? On Friday, the FDA proposed tentative guidelines for the use of nanotechnology in food and cosmetics.

 

Measured in billionths of a meter, submicroscopic nanoparticles are usually less than 100 nanometers. A sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick, and a human hair is about 80,000.

 

They've been showing up in increasing numbers in sunscreens, cosmetics, moisturizers, and lately food and food packaging.

 

Dennis Keefe, director of the FDA's office of food additive safety, told The Huffington Post that some companies have been looking into the possibility that nanoparticles can reduce the risk of bacterial contamination, and while the FDA is on record as saying that nanotechnology isn't necessarily unsafe, there's concern that particles at that scale might have their own specific safety issues that need to be investigated.

 

The current FDA proposal suggests that food companies might someday maybe be required to provide safety data about any food product or packaging that involves nanoparticles, but they're still taking proposals and there's no deadline for finalizing the documents.