The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has adopted a recommendation on balancing nanotechnologies benefits and risks to public health and the environment at the Assembly’s 2013 spring session held in Strasbourg, France. This recent activity in the Council of Europe has been followed by NIA, which has now written a public briefing on nanotechnology and the Council of Europe
“While industries always take the lion’s share of responsibility for communicating the benefits of their products on the market […] the current risk-centric debates on nanomaterials have also created a strong responsibility for governments to wade in and support nanotechnology’s innovative power”, said NIA Director General Steffi Friedrichs in a recent article
The NANoREG project held its Kick-off Meeting on 13 May 2013; according to NIA Director General Steffi Friedrichs, it is “an important project for the nanotechnology community” as its main emphasis is on “regulatory relevant test only, with a view to be agreeing on standard operating procedures for the characterisation, measurement and testing of nanomaterials”
Austrian Environment Agency has launched a 3rd Stakeholder Consultation on the European Commission Study for the Review of the List of Restricted Substances under RoHS 2 Directive. NIA Members are invited to provide comments by Monday 3 June 2013
NIA has talked about the problems industry faces from nanomaterial registry schemes across Europe. Dr Steffi Friedrichs, NIA Director-General, made the comments in the ChemicalWatch article, EU Commission finalises nano registry tender
'In Australia, three authorities share the responsibility of enforcing regulatory control over sunscreens. Together with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) operate the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)'
NIA Member Keller and Heckman LLP has released a document commenting that ‘it is unclear how numerous national reporting schemes will help to deliver better knowledge or promote a more adequate and rapid response in the event of a specific risk being identified’ than the EC’s REACH Regulation
The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has requested public comments on the progress reports proposed for its partnership program, the Cancer Nanotechnology Platform Partnerships (CNPP). The NCI, will create these partnerships through its Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, ‘a network of awards funded…to promote the application of nanotechnology to cancer research and care’
A draft meeting report of the ANSI Nanotechnology Standards Panel has stated that ‘stakeholders struggle to stay up to date with various regulatory requirements that each rely on a different definition for nanomaterials’. It therefore emphasised that ‘consistent terminology is a critical need for not only enhancing commerce but understanding the scope of the conversation’
The EC’s JRC-IHCP has published a report quantifying the ‘consequences for industry, consumers, human health and the environment’ of proposed modifications for the REACH Regulation. It finds the total implementation cost of the proposed options to be between EUR 11 and EUR 73 million
The US EPA has announced that it is ‘promulgating SNURs under the TSCA for 15 chemical substances’. One of these substances is ‘functionalized Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs)’. The ruling will be effective from 8 July 2013
Environment Agency Austria is running a third consultation on the ‘draft methodology manual for the identification and assessment of substances for a potential restriction under RoHS 2 (Restriction of Hazardous Substances)’. The NIA recently submitted comments on the second consultation, urging the removal of references that categorise nanomaterials as ‘Substances of the highest Concern’
The French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy has extended the deadline for first-year declarations to be made to its nano reporting scheme. According to the authority this follows consideration of ‘the diversity of actors covered by the declaration requirement, and at the request of several industries’
NIA Members have been invited to speak at the 2013 Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization's Conference in Santa Barbara, USA. A session will be held to hear from nanotechnology industry representatives on examples of how nanotechnology can be used to reduce energy or other resource consumption, compared to the technologies they substitute
A number of Belgian NGOs have supported an open letter calling for the establishment of a Belgian register of nanomaterials. The letter states that more and more products containing nanomaterials are appearing on the market and yet little is known about them and their impacts on human health and the environment
A research consortium funded by the US NIEHS. The authors of the paper nevertheless stress that ‘the approach used in these studies was not intended to mimic real-world exposure conditions or deposition patterns in the lung that would occur via inhalation’; rather, it was ‘to evaluate whether different laboratories could generate similar and reproducible results with ENMs’
