EPA Overlooking Testing and Regulations of Nanochemicals

As the nanotechnology sector expands, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not kept pace with oversight controls. Despite work to develop research strategies and priorities, the agency has not proposed any actual regulatory program for nanotech materials.

EPA has developed an agency research strategy and participated in setting national research priorities as part of the National Nanotechology Initiative (NNI) of the presidential National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). EPA's only proposal for control over the production and use of this new technology is a voluntary stewardship program. EPA has also proposed requiring no new review for nanochemicals whose "normal" chemical has already been reviewed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Nanotechnology is the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things usually between one and 100 nanometers, a "near atomic" scale, with a myriad of potentially beneficial applications. Already incorporated into billions of dollars worth of products, the possible adverse impacts of this radically different material is mostly unknown. Governmental oversight of nanomaterials has been lagging far behind industrial production. Of particular concern is what significant health and environmental risks, if any, do nanomaterials pose on both ends of the lifecycle: production and decomposition.

In a step toward stronger management, on Aug. 16, the National Nanotechonology Coordination Office (NNCO) of NSTC released a list of federal research priorities addressing the environmental, health and safety concerns for nanotechnology. Prioritization of Environmental, Health and Safety Research Needs for Engineered Materials identified top priorities within the following five research areas: scientific methodology, human health, the environment, exposure and risk management. The priorities include developing methods to detect nanomaterials on the biological level, standardizing assessment of particle attributes, identifying principal environmental exposure sources and groups vulnerable to exposure and development of workplace best practices.

While this document is an improvement on previous research agendas, some experts want immediate government action to ensure the safe development and use of nanotech products, not just research. Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechonologies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars said, "I would give the federal government a B+ for effort, but only a C- for achievement."

The Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program (NMSP), under which companies agree to share information about nanomaterials and participate in a risk management plan, has also received criticism. J. Clarence Davies, Emerging Nanotechnologies Senior Advisor, sees NMSP as flawed since "the agency has signaled that real regulation is a long way off, and may never happen," which acts as a participatory disincentive. In his May 2007 report, EPA and Nanotechnology: Oversight for the 21st Century, Davies called for a voluntary program in the context of a strong regulatory framework.

Even though experts agree that many questions about impacts from nanotechnology remain unanswered, EPA's July paper, TSCA Inventory Status of Nanoscale Substances, treats nanochemicals the same as their traditional chemical counterparts. This approach exempts the new nanotech versions of chemicals from pre-manufacture EPA review if the chemical, in its traditional non-nanotech form, is already on the TSCA Inventory. Davies, who also authored the original administrative version of TSCA, explains that this is a legal quandary, not a scientific one. TSCA's legal definition of a chemical substance, created in 1976, could not have imagined size as a distinguishing attribute and unintentionally failed to include this limitation. Nanotechnology has changed those parameters, and in Davies' opinion, EPA's disregard in the July paper for this new reality "flies in the face of the vast majority of scientific evidence."

"Every day that EPA is not exercisizing some kind of oversight on nanomaterials is another day when the American public is involuntarily participating in a huge experiment to see whether nanotechnology poses any threat to health or the environment," Davis said at an Aug. 2 public meeting. "It is another day when the agency is not giving the public the protection it should have."

Prioritization of Environmental, Health and Safety Research Needs for Engineered Materials is open for public comment until Sept. 17.

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