As soon as I saw the title I knew it had to be a nanotech product. “The new ‘no sweat’ science” was an article in the Sunday (Dec. 21, 2008) edition of The Province daily paper. A local company, Firstar Sports (based in Surrey), makes a shirt that wicks away your sweat and never smells. The current CEO, Keith Gracey, wore the shirt over a period of months for his workouts and never washed it. Plus, he never had any complaints about the smell.

The ‘no smell’ part was the clue. There’s been a lot of talk about silver nanoparticles and their anti-bacterial properties which can be used in bandages to combat (infection and in clothing to combat smell.  Interestingly, nobody used the word nanotechnology or any of its variants in the article,

Throw in some anti-bacterial silver ions and Firstar’s garments have a 99.9-er-cent kill rate for bacteria after 50 washes, Gracey  (CEO) and Thom (Founder and VP) say. [emphasis is mine]

Certainly the marketing and PR folks seem to be backing off from using the nanotechnology or any of its variants. I commented on this development in my Talking nano posting. I also gave a link to an article by Alex Shmidt about this.

The article in The Province did not mention any risks but i don’t expect the reporter knew enough to ask the question. For the record, I have seen material which indicates that the silver nanoparticles (or ions) wash off, which means they could end up in our water supply. As far as I know, there’s no definitive data whether or not this feature could pose risks.