A new report from the UK’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) calls for urgent action to investigate the impact of nanomaterials on health and the environment and to overhaul the regulation of nanomaterials which are now found in over 600 products including clothes and cosmetics.
While there is no evidence yet that these materials cause harm to people or the environment, there is very little research about them.
The RCEP highlights some nanomaterials that it is particularly concerned about, including carbon nanotubes and silver nanofibres.
Carbon nanotubes are cylinders of carbon that are 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair and can be several millimetres long. Potential applications include highly targeted delivery of drugs, solar panels and memory chips in computers. The RCEP said laboratory tests suggest if carbon nanofibres get inside human cells they can do damage similar to asbestos.
Silver nanoparticles are of a similar width but not as long and used in clothing such as sportswear because their antimicrobial properties stop the bacteria that cause odours.
The chairman of the RCEP, Professor Sir John Lawton, said on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday morning that he would not wear clothes that contained nanomaterials.
The Commission is concerned that when clothes with silver nanofibres are washed in washing machines the nanofibres escape through the waste water and then get into the environment where nobody knows what harm they might cause.
The RCEP contacted over 100 research, industry and government bodies to find out what they knew about the development, life cycle, safety, toxicity, regulation, and waste management of nanomaterials as well as their current and potential impact on human health and the environment.
The RCEP said that:
“While the Commission found no evidence of harm to health or the environment from nanomaterials, it believes that the pace at which such new nanomaterials are being developed and marketed is beyond the capacity of existing testing and regulatory arrangements to control the potential environmental impacts adequately.”
It is not the size per se but the way they behave and what they are used for that concerns the Commission.
They mention a survey done recently for the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC that found more than 600 consumer products listing nanomaterials among their ingredients.
Sir John said the Commission was also concerned that very soon it will not be possible to test and regulate the more sophisticated innovations of nanoproducts as if they were chemicals or mixtures of chemicals and the current methods will be inadequate.
“The Commission strongly believes that new governance arrangements are vital to deal with the challenges posed by current and future innovation in this sector,” he said in a statement.
The Commission said they were not calling for a blanket ban or moratorium on nanomaterials but they want three things to happen:
- We need to find out more about how individual types of nanomaterials behave inside organisms and in the environment and not treat them as one class of material.
- We urgently need to do a lot more specific research on nanomaterials, not just on their properties and impact in order to assess and manage risk, but also on how to detect them in the environment.
- Governments need to admit how little they know about nanomaterials and how long it will be before they can deal with them. They have to be flexible and resilient in how they manage and control emerging technology in general and nanomaterials in particular.
“Novel Materials in the Environment: The case of nanotechnology.”
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Published 12 November 2008.
Sources: Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, BBC News.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD