Nano-silver bottles a hoax, FTC says

The Fair Trade Commission yesterday ordered 16 makers and sellers of nano-silver nursing bottles to correct “false or exaggerated” advertisements. The businesses include top discount store E-Mart and a leading infant goods maker, Agabang & Co.
They have advertised that the bottles, made of material including extremely minute particles of silver, resist bacteria better than ordinary bottles. But the advertisements are based on misleading experiments or those lacking objectivity, the antitrust agency said. Nano-silver nursing bottles sell at prices 30 percent higher than ordinary nursing bottles.
Since silver has some natural antibacterial and antifungal properties, nano-sized (one billionth of a meter) particles that come into contact with bacteria or fungi will have great bactericidal and fungicidal effects, some scientists and businesses say.
The 16 companies conducted experiments to prove that their products resist bacteria and quoted the test results in their advertisements. But 13 did not use the bottles themselves but rather the material used to make the bottles in the experiments, making them insufficient to prove the bottles’ effects, the FTC said.
The other three firms used bottles for the experiments, but did not let the laboratory randomly choose which bottles to test, according to the agency.
When the Korea Consumer Agency randomly tested nano-silver and ordinary bottles for bactericidal and fungicidal effects, there were no significant differences, the FTC said.

By Moon So-young Staff Writer [symoon@joongang.co.kr]