Environmental Concerns
The German branch of Friends of the Earth, Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), has asked consumers not to buy a new type of washing machine that uses silver nanoparticles. BUND criticized the product, claiming that considerable amounts of silver could enter sewage plants and seriously trouble the biological purification process of waste water. Friends of the Earth has also claimed that silver nanoparticles have a toxic effect on different kinds of living cells.
Samsung countered that only an accumulated amount of 0.05 grams of silver is released per machine, per year, while the released silver-ions quickly bind to non-nano-sized structures in the water. This then raises the question of what structures Samsung thinks these nanoparticles will bind to that they will not later come into contact with marine life.
Read more about this topic: Silver Nano
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