Home Care Topics
The Home Care department within IKW provides competent answers to questions concerning hygiene, washing and cleaning.
Safety
“Nano” in cleaning and maintenance products intended for private consumers
Nanotechnology (Greek “nanos” = dwarf) is a collective term for a broad selection of technologies which focus on research, processing, production and application of materials and structures which are smaller than 100 nanometres. One nanometre is one billionth of a metre (0.000 000 001 m or 10-9 m). Nanostructures have always occurred in nature.
Some cleaning and maintenance products for private consumers (e.g. certain products for cleaning and/or maintaining surfaces of glass or leather, floors or cars) contain nanomaterials(1) or other ingredients which can form nanolayers during application. The task of these ingredients is to provide the surfaces to be cleaned with improved properties, e.g. water or dirt repellent, anti-fogging, by adhering to the surface.
The formation of nanolayers on the surfaces can be achieved with or without the use of nanomaterials and is referred to as the “nanoeffect”. In maintenance and cleaning products with a nanoeffect the following ingredients are for instance used:
- Aluminium oxide, silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide as dispersions
- Fluorocarbon resins
- Nanoscale wax dispersions (2)
- Silanes
Like all ingredients in household products, nanomaterials are individually assessed in terms of their safety for health and environmental compatibility and released for the intended application (e.g. spraying or application in aqueous solution). This is the responsibility of the manufacturers of the products.
Detailed information is available in the publication “Safety Assessment of Cleaning and Maintenance Products, which contain Nanomaterials and/or Form Nano-Layers”. Download link to the full paper <link fileadmin/ikw/downloads/Haushaltspflege/HP_Nano-e.pdf>www.ikw.org/fileadmin/ikw/downloads/Haushaltspflege/HP_Nano-e.pdf</link>
1) In accordance with the definitions in the draft of the Technical Committee 229 “Nanotechnologies” of the International Organisation for Standardisation ISO, nanomaterials are either nanoobjects or nanostructured materials. Nanoobjects are materials which are confined in one, two or three dimensions at the nanoscale (approximately 1 to 100nm). Nanoobjects with three dimensions at the nanoscale are referred to as nanoparticles. Nanostructured materials have an internal structure at the nanoscale. Typical examples are aggregates and agglomerates of nanoobjects. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has taken those over as definitions.
2) The fine distribution of solids in liquids is referred to as a dispersion.