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Islander cleaning up with nanotechnology

By PAULETTE LeBLANC - | Mar 24, 2021

Ted Tidwell

pleblanc@breezenewspapers.com

Ted Tidwell, president of 1st Enviro Safety, said people tell him his products are the best kept secret on Pine Island, but he’s trying to get the word out about his nanotechnology driven cleaning and agricultural goods. He began as a retiree who ended up with a cleaning product after his wife asked him to create a safe, non-toxic cleanser in order to keep the grandkids safe.

“I had to deal with the chemical companies and they knew what I was trying to do,” said Tidwell, “they were laughing at this little retired guy down in Florida who thinks he can create a cleaning product without carcinogens. We ship our products all over –Malaysia, South America, Canada, South Africa, Kenya, England and people come from all over the world.”

According to Tidwell, he merely stumbled across the process of nanoparticle creation, described by many as one of the most exciting new technologies in the world. Nanoparticles are generally defined as a particle of matter that is between 1 and 100 nanometers (nm) in diameter. A single nanoparticle measures 1 billionth of a meter. A human hair, measured diagonally, is between 75 thousand and 110 thousand nanometers. Comparing a nano to a human hair, Tidwell said, is similar to comparing a basketball to planet earth. A spoon full contains trillions of nanoparticles.

“We create nanos from plant-based chemicals,” said Tidwell. “This incredibly small technology is very versatile. What we’re doing primarily is supplying farmers with our product, which is creating increased plant yields, which is in turn increasing their income. The reports we’re receiving from farmers is that with an investment as small as $6 per acre they’re making a profit of $50 or $60 per acre. One of our primary missions is to increase farm wealth, so as we increase food production, we’re increasing everyone’s livelihood.”

In addition to the agricultural work 1st Enviro Safety is doing by supplying farmers with his BioWash product, Tidwell has created a line of Purely Green Hygienic cleaners, degreasers and hand soaps. After receiving a call from a doctor who told Tidwell one of his cleaning products was the best disinfectant he’d ever used, he was encouraged to call the Environmental Protection Agency to register his products.

“We passed all the EPA tests, but all our ingredients come from plants,” said Tidwell. “When they found out that we don’t have an active ingredient to put on the label, we were not able to get it registered through the EPA. We finally gave up on trying to get it registered after they told me it would take five to seven years and $6-7 million, with no assurance that I’d ever get it registered, so we simply sold it as a cleaner. In 2015, we licensed the product in other parts of the world. Our licensee in India had it photographed with micron photography, which is powerful enough to determine that we had nanoparticles less than three nanometers in size.”

When the pandemic began, Tidwell said, the FDA and the CDC announced the importance of hand washing, in the absence of alcohol-based sanitizers. Tidwell explains the process of killing pests is not unlike the process of killing the coronavirus currently plaguing the globe.

“While we kill insects, we are also a bio-pesticide,” said Tidwell. “The COVID-19 virus is surrounded by a lipid envelope — lipid being fat. So we started out as a cleaner, and that’s basically what you do — you dissolve fat. We simply dissolved that lipid membrane around the virus. The interior of the virus is basically a dead protein. When we dissolve the envelope, it disintegrates and washes away very easily. With that confidence, we introduced what we call Purely Green Hygienic Soap.”

This hand soap, he said, is also used as a decontamination cleanser because the tiny particles are able to penetrate the pores and lift out germs. Although all soaps contain particles, which have been around since the beginning of time, Tidwell said, according to research done by his company, most soaps and cleaning products have a particle size of approximately 150 to over 500 nanometers, so by having particles under 3 nanometers, his products are set apart. It took Tidwell roughly five years, he said, to come up with a non-carcinogenic cleaning product, as he explained the difficulty in creating an effective cleaning product using no harsh chemicals.

“I realized I had stumbled onto a cutting edge technology,” said Tidwell. “I began to see all the versatility of this product.”

1st EnviroSafety, Inc. is located at 10200 Betsy Parkway, St James City, FL 33956.

For more information on these products call 239-283-1222, email info@1stenvirosafety.com or visit fertilizerboosters.com, purelygreenclean.com or 1stbiopesticide.com.