EU Nanoparticle Legislation Should be Exported to US

US Lags Behind EU in Nanotech Regulation

“Small may well be beautiful but to protect public safety and prevent a consumer backlash the US should adopt European style rules on nanomaterials,” says Guy Montague-Jones of Cosmeticsdesign-europe.com.

In March the EU amended the Cosmetics Directive to implement stricter requirements for nanomaterials, including mandatory listing of nanomaterial ingredients used for certain purposes on cosmetic packaging and the requirement for manufacturers to inform the EU Commission six months prior to product launch if they intend on using nanomaterials in a formulation, after which the Commission will consult an expert committee on the safety of the nanomaterials proposed.

Montague-Jones suggests that this will allay consumer fears and help ensure the safety of nanomaterials, but if businesses and government in the US do not follow the EU’s example, the potential of the multi-billion dollar nanotechnology industry will be squandered.

The US as ever, lags behind the EU in terms of cosmetics legislation and in 2006 spent less than 3 percent of the $1.4 billion federal budget for nanotech research, on evaluating the potential risks of nanotechnology. Michael R. Taylor, former FDA Deputy Commissioner for Policy and a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, remarked in a 2006 report commissioned by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies that the FDA is not “nano ready” due to dwindling resources and capacity caused in part by inadequate funding from Congress, which could potentially lead the agency to miss safety concerns or discover them too late, potentially putting the public’s health at risk and hindering innovation.

In addition, initiatives to get the industry involved and gather information about safety have been voluntary, unsurprisingly resulting in very few submissions. One of the problems is (as a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service for the US Congress notes), is that much of the information held by companies developing nanomaterials is proprietary and they “will not voluntarily reveal details about production processes or even the chemical composition or physical structure of their nanomaterials, due to concerns about competition, potential effects of regulatory decisions, and potential liability.”

The industry may indeed be shooting themselves in the foot because if they are not more forthcoming with data and the government continues to give them carte blanche to use nanomaterials unchecked, consumers will become increasingly suspicious of an industry that increasingly seems to place profit before consumer health.