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AN award-winning leader of an international civil society group
warned Thursday that the foods Filipinos may be eating and the
cosmetics they are using may contain nano-scale ingredients that are
harmful to human health.
Pat Mooney, executive director of Erosion
Technology and Concentration, said these nano-scale ingredients
could go inside the body and may affect the immune system.
“It is too small and mostly invisible, it
could be found in your food, cosmetics, laptop, cellphone and
clothing,” Mooney said.
Mooney is in the Philippines to speak before the
government and the scientific community on the potential impacts of
nanotechnology and synthetic biology. He was invited by The Third
World Network and Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community
Empowerment.
He worked with civil society organizations on
international trade and development issues related to agriculture
and biodiversity, for more than 30 years.
He wrote or co-author several books on the
politics of biotechnology and biodiversity and received The Right
Livelihood Award—known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”—from
the Swedish Parliament in 1985.
In 1998, Mooney received the Pearson Peace Prize
from Canada’s Governor General. He also received the American
“Giraffe Award” given to people “who stick their necks out”.
He explained nanotechnology manipulates matter
at the scale of atoms and molecules, resulting to changes that
scientists call quantum effects.
“Scientists predict that within a decade,
giving birth to a living, self-replicating organism from a simple
bacterial genome inserted into an empty bacterial cell will become
no big deal,” said Mooney.
He also urged the Philippine government to
regulate the use of nanotechnology to assure that it will harm
Filipinos.
Mooney said the market for nanotechnology is
$700 billion and expected to hit $2.6 trillion by 2015.
He cited 26 studies regarding the effects of
nanotechnology and “no one said it is safe.”
Mooney also said there are about 800 products
being sold in the country that went through the process of nanotechnology,
the latest being sunscreens and cosmetics.
“No nanotechnology should touch a human
skin,” Mooney said explaining small organisms will sink through
the skin and circulate with the blood.
Mooney said any effort by governments or
industry to confine the debate solely on the health and safety
aspects of nano-scale technologies will be a mistake.
“At stake here is the world’s $3-trillion
food retail market, agricultural export markets valued at $544
billion, the livelihoods of some 2.6 billion farming people and the
well being of people like us who dependent upon the farmers for our
daily rice and bread,” Mooney said.
-- Ira Karen Apanay
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