Talk:DuPont and Nanotechnology

I reverted the qualifier - "although that is obviously true of any chemical product" - added after Invista's claim that its Teflon leather protection "works at the nano scale". There is no supporting argument as to why that would be the case - the qualifier is suggesting that there is nothing different about nantechnology products when there is - as acknowledged by DuPont themselves. --Bob Burton 21:53, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

DuPont claims there is something different about nanotechnology but they are talking through their hats. Teflon was in use long before "nano" had any commonly understood meaning other than what Robin Williams said on his TV show. Teflon is a chemical made in the lab or chemical plant. Since it is made of molecules, it works on the nano scale. So does table salt. There are hazards if you misuse it. Also true of table salt. Nanotechnology is claimed here as a mere advertising gimick to catch folks attention. It caught yours.

In any relevant sense for concerns about hazards of "nanotechnology", you would look less silly if you confined your concerns to things that were new and worked in unfamiliar ways. When Drexler talks of nanotechnology, he is talking about tiny machines, not chemicals that any chemist can make any afternoon, things that accomplish tasks that could not be done in the last century.

Well, Buckyballs (C-60, spheres made of 60 carbon atoms all bonded together) and nanotubes (also made of carbon) are things that were made last century and one would be well advised to treat them with some concern. You definitely do not want grounds and waterways polluted with them. And you don't want them in your air or your food.

Does that yet make any sense to you?

Karpinski 01:42, 24 Jan 2006 (EST)

When the above got no response, I wrote to the editor and got a response to which I replied within the hour as follows:

On 2006, Jan 27,, at 16:06, Bob wrote:

Dear Richard

Thanks for your note re Teflon.

What is the basis on which you believe Invista/DuPont's leather application is not a real nanotechnology product just marketing hype?

I understand something of both chemistry and nanotechnology starting with Feynman's original paper "Room at the Bottom". My son is a chemist and when I mentioned your concerns, he had the same reaction I did, namely: "Huh? but that's not nanotechnology."

As I said before, ask any chemist or nanotechnologist.

Some counterpoints:

1. DuPont is a major player in nanotech (As mentioned in Rick Weiss, "Stricter Nanotechnology Laws Are Urged: Report Warns Of Risk to Public (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/10/AR2006011001520.html)," Washington Post, January 11, 2006.)

OK

2. DuPont have also acknowledged their interest/involvement/exposure to    the risks of nanotechnology products to the point that they are calling for some standards to be developed for it.

Sure. Treating DuPont as a plural is a British practice, by the way.

3. Of course it is possible that DuPont's Teflon Leather claim re nano is just marketing hype. But why remove the June 3, 2003 DuPont media release announcing the new product, titled, "Teflon®: Protecting   Natural Leather and Suede," from the company's online news archive?

Because they might be concerned that too many people will be frightened by the likes of you. Remember a lot of Americans believe it is warmer in the summer because the Earth is closer to the sun then. (Then why does summer happen in different months in the northern and southern hemispheres?)

The title still shows up on the cached copy of the site index.

Isn't Google wonderful.

4. Since the article was published neither DuPont or Environmental Defense have taken issue with taking Invista's/DuPonts claim at face value.

Ignorance is rampant. Wise advice that I ignore is not to engage in a battle of wits with those who are unarmed. The PR value of the battle is negative.

If you want I'll post this exchange to the discussion column on the page (leaving out your email details).

That would be lovely. Since I already get hundreds of spam emails each day, you are free to give out my email address as widely as you please. If you really want me to see your email, I have a special rule that if the subject line includes the word "nitpicker" then the email gets into my in box.

It was only by accident that I rescued yours from my Junk mailbox, but now you are whitelisted.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Bob Burton.

From: Richard Karpinski  Date: January 25, 2006 1:56:32 PM CST To: editor@prwatch.org Subject: Nanotech worry over teflon is silly

Three times, before this, in different ways, I've told you that the worry about Teflon as a dangerous nanotech product is silly. Ask any nanotechnologist or any chemist. Sure it can be a problem, especially if you have a lot of tiny particles of it floating around in the air. That is also true of wheat flour which can explode in such conditions. Neither is nanotechnology in any accepted sense. Do not believe DuPont when they say it is. That is self serving hype of the kind you argue against.

It just makes your worthy publication look ignorant and foolish to worry about Teflon.

Dick

Saturday evening I happened to notice a "This Month in History" tidbit in the Smithsonian magazine which prompted me to send also this just before midnight (PST) on 28 Jan 2006:

Incidentally Smithsonian current issue has this note about Teflon:

"65 years ago: Accidental Discovery While trying to create a refrigerant, chemist Roy Plunkett produces a fortuitous find later called Teflon, which he patents February 4, 1941. It is used to make valves employed in building the first atom bomb. In 1954, French engineer Marc Gregoire sprays his wife's pans with the slippery substance and creates his own marketable invention: nonstick cookware."

Thus it was patented more than 18 years before Richard Feynman gave his talk "Room at the Bottom" which is cited as the original impetus for considering nanotechnology decades later.

If you want more things to worry about than Teflon as a nanotech product, there are two more chances here: 1. Some people have concerns that the cookware can cause people to ingest Teflon which has not been conclusively proven to be utterly safe for people to eat. 2. Some people worry about anything nuclear or having anything to do with atom bombs which is why Nuclear Magnetic Resonance was renamed Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMR -> MRI) some years ago. No doubt a PR specialist recommended the change. Remember that women pay so much attention to their appearance because they correctly believe that men can see better than they can think. PR is like that.

I don't particularly recommend either worry but they make at least as much sense as the nanotechnology worry.

Listen guys, I am on your side. I enjoy and appreciate your publication and your web site. I particularly enjoy that it is a wiki and that your blogs offer readers a chance to comment on your stories and blogs.

Still, when I fixed the wiki, mildly, Bob removed the fix. At least he said why in the talk page behind it. I responded at length in that talk page, including, IIRC, that "nitpicker" should be included in the subject line of any email to get past my spam filter. But near as I have yet seen it took a third intervention of writing to the editor before any response to me was forthcoming. Only by happenstance did I notice Bob's response to my letter to the editor in the email that was classified as spam by the auto-filtering of Apple Mail.

Would you care to consider passing articles which deal with subjects where your expertise is less than superb past some qualified people before publishing them? It would increase your credibility to avoid appearing so foolish on occasions like this. Is that too much work? Maybe it really is.

Dick --- Dick, I contacted DuPont directly and they confirmed that the Teflon leather protector isn't a nanotech product so I have correct this page and will fix related ones. Thanks for your comments.

Re your complaint about your comments: Your first comment from an unregistered IP was an unexplained change which it is standard proactice to revert if it is significant but unreferenced. Yours change wasn't explained, as I noted at the time. Your subsequent comment was also - as I recollect - via an unregistered IP and then on a talk page on one of the nano pages but one I couldnlt find when I went looking as it wasn't linked to the general nanotechnology page. Hence, I didn't remember your comment about whitelists. Plus I don't work full-time, am on different time zone (a day ahead) and have heaps of edits/emails to attend to. So sorry about the delay but I can't do everything as fast as you and others might like.--Bob Burton 19:18, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

Thanks for listening and repairing the article so it is not foolish. I wish it were sufficient to just note the problem, but it wasn't as obvious to you as it was to me. We still got to a fixed article. I have no remaining complaints.

Karpinski 22:38, 1 Feb 2006 (EST)