EU and OECD act against potential nanotechnology risks as new laboratory safety test developed
Rich member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are pooling experts and budgets to assess the environmental risks of using nanomaterials, including those incorporated into sunscreens, cosmetics and packaging. The OECD’s Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials will manage the programme; it can already call on 100 experts from the OECD’s 30 member countries.
Rich member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are pooling experts and budgets to assess the environmental risks of using nanomaterials, including those incorporated into sunscreens, cosmetics and packaging. The OECD’s Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials will manage the programme; it can already call on 100 experts from the OECD’s 30 member countries.
“Nanomaterials will be tested for: their physical-chemical properties; environmental degradation and accumulation; environmental toxicology; and mammalian toxicology,” said an OECD note. It added that these would be carried out using existing OECD Test Guidelines for the Safety of Chemicals, and the experts would be assessing the results to see whether these rules are appropriate for nanomaterials, which can behave differently in the physical world than standard particles. “If not, new or amended guidelines will have to be developed,” said the OECD.
Its initiative has come as the European Commission has moved to head off growing public concerns about the potential environmental health problems associated with coatings and other products containing nanoparticles. It has released a code of conduct on nanotechnology research for EU member states, asking them to ensure nanotechnology research does not produce harmful products. For instance, one code principle says: “Research should not harm or threaten people, animals, plants or the environment.”
Meanwhile, researchers continue trying to develop new ways of testing the health effects of nanoparticles in cosmetics and other consumer products. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, San Francisco, California have developed a way of predicting and evaluating the effects of exposure to a particular nanomaterial by using human skin cells in a Petri dish. Once the skin cells have been exposed to the nanoparticles, computerised image analysis is used to gauge cell mortality, and genome analysis is employed to assess which genes have been switched on or off.