According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) website, on July 30, 2010, OMB received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a notice concerning “Pesticide Products Containing Nanoscale Materials.” No additional information regarding the notice is available on OMB’s website. During the April 29, 2010, meeting of EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC), William Jordan, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), stated that EPA was in the...
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On July 28, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a Federal Register notice announcing that it is reopening the comment period for its February 3, 2010, proposed significant new use rule (SNUR) for the chemical substance identified generically as multi-walled carbon nanotubes (P-08-199). According to the July 28, 2010, notice, a commenter noted that neither the proposed rule nor the docket contained specific carbon nanotube data or data supporting the nature of the...
On July 20, 2010, Representative Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (H.R. 5786), which would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) “to ensure the safe use of cosmetics.” Under the bill, the Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would: Monitor developments in the scientific understanding of any adverse health effects related to the use of nanotechnology in the formulation of cosmetics; and Consider scale-specific hazard...
On July 12, 2010, the European Commission (EC) opened a public consultation on the pre-consultation opinion of the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) entitled “Scientific Basis for the Definition of the Term ‘Nanomaterial.’” The EC states that its services need a working definition for the term “nanomaterial” to ensure the consistency of forthcoming regulatory developments, to guide the effective implementation of existing...
On July 7, 2010, the European Parliament (EP) voted that nanoscale ingredients should be banned from food in the European Union (EU) until the health and environmental risks they might pose are better understood, and that any nanoscale ingredients that are eventually authorized should be clearly labeled as such. The EP voted on several amendments to draft legislation concerning the authorization of novel foods, including a provision that would prohibit food from cloned animals or their...
July 9, 2010
OSTP Issues Request for Information on the NNI
On July 6, 2010, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a Request for Information (RFI) on the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). According to OSTP, the purpose of the RFI is to enhance the value of the NNI “by reaching out to the nanotechnology stakeholder community for specific input for the next NNI Strategic Plan to be published in December 2010. The RFI refers to the NNI goals identified from the 2007 Strategic Plan as a starting point for...
On July 2, 2010, the European Commission’s (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) announced the availability of a reference report entitled Considerations on a Definition of Nanomaterial for Regulatory Purposes. JRC prepared the report in response to a request from the European Parliament (EP). JRC states that the aim of the report is to review and discuss issues and challenges related to a definition of “nanomaterial,” and to provide practical guidance for a definition for...
July 6, 2010
Final Nano Summit White Paper Released
We are pleased to announce the release of the final white paper from the October 8-9, 2009, summit entitled “Environmentally Responsible Development of Nanotechnology,” which was held by The Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative. The charge for summit attendees was to explore issues regarding potential risk across nano-enabled product lifecycles, with the goal of generating a set of recommendations for North Carolina businesses regarding how to address such...
July 1, 2010
ANSI Webinar Will Discuss Draft Labeling Guidance
On July 9, 2010, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) will host a webinar to discuss draft international guidance on the labeling of manufactured nano-objects and products containing manufactured nano-objects. The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Committee (TC) 352 Nanotechnologies and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) TC 229 Nanotechnologies are jointly developing a Technical Specification entitled “Guidance on the labeling of...
According to a report released on June 25, 2010, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faces challenges in effectively regulating nanomaterials that may be released in air, water, and waste because EPA lacks the technology to monitor and characterize these materials, or the statutes include volume-based regulatory thresholds that may be too high for effectively regulating the production and disposal of nanomaterials. In...