Consumer Products Inventory

The Origins of the Consumer Products Inventory

The Consumer Products Inventory was developed by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies and was released in March 2006. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies is a research project, based in Washington, D.C., that was established as a partnership by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a philanthropic organization, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, [Page 118]a nonpartisan institution that analyzes domestic and global issues. The inventory was created to serve multiple purposes, including determining the number of nanotechnology consumer products available on the market, developing a tool available to the public for searching information about products that claim to use nanotechnology, and monitoring how the landscape of nanotechnology commercialization evolves over time.

Products included in the inventory generally satisfy three selection criteria. First, the products have to be readily purchasable by consumers, which excludes industrial and intermediary applications, along with drugs and medications that require a prescription. Second, the products have to be identified as based on nanotechnology by the manufacturer or another credible source, which excludes products that are suspected to be employing nanotechnology, but are not claimed as such. Third, the nanotechnology claims for the product have to appear reasonable, which excludes products that only use the phrase “nano” for marketing or advertising purposes and do not make specific claims about the use of nanotechnology.

Claims about products listed in the inventory are only based on information that can be found on the Internet. A series of mostly English language Internet searches were conducted to identify products for inclusion, and claims are reproduced from the manufacturers' Website so that the public can trace back the information to the original source. In instances where foreign language searches were conducted, the claims have been translated into English using Internet-based translation software. The inventory is not expected to function as a comprehensive listing of all nanotechnology consumer products available on the market at any particular moment. Instead, it is meant to operate as a dynamic information tool to foster public awareness of how nanotechnology is being commercialized. To this end, it is updated on a regular basis as a way to track changing commercialization patterns over time and to illuminate corresponding policy and regulatory implications that emerge from these trends.

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