It’s not often that I write about one of Cornell’s finest, but today I will mention Olivia Ong, a senior Textiles and Apparel major. Her invention include a dress treated with silver nanoparticles, which both protect it from getting dirty and kills bacteria. The Cornell Chronicle in Student designer and fiber scientists create a dress that prevents colds and a jacket that destroys noxious gases notes some of the details:

The upper portion of the dress contains cotton coated with silver nanoparticles. Dong first created positively charged cotton fibers using ammonium- and epoxy-based reactions, inducing positive ionization. The silver particles, about 10-20 nanometers across (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) were synthesized in citric acid, which prevented nanoparticle agglomeration.

Her other invention, a jacket with palladium nanofibers, offers the potential to passively purify the atmosphere. She calls her designer line “something really moving toward the future, and really advanced.”

The only worries are what the side-effects of wearing nano-creations might be. There are probably significant health risks to introducing tiny elementary particles into your system. Sure, they don’t seem to wear off the fabric, but they eventually must. And after that, we’ll have them in the air, in our food, the water supply… and probably evolve them into our basic cell chemistry.