Scientists Warn That Nanotechnology Needs Some Serious Regulation

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Nanotechnology Regulation Needed, Critics Say By Rick Weiss Washington

Post Staff Writer Monday, December 5, 2005; A08

 

Amid growing evidence that some of the tiniest materials ever

engineered pose potentially big environmental, health and safety

risks, momentum is building in Congress, environmental circles and in

the industry itself to beef up federal oversight of the new materials,

which are already showing up in dozens of consumer products.But large

gaps in scientists' understanding of the materials are slowing the

development of a regulatory scheme. Equally unresolved is who should

pay for the additional safety studies that everyone agrees are needed.

At issue are " nanomaterials, " made of intricately engineered particles

and fibers as small as 1/80,000th the diameter of a human hair.

 

At that scale the laws of chemistry and physics bend, giving familiar

substances novel chemical, electrical and physical

properties.Nanomaterials are already being integrated into a wide

range of products, including sports equipment, computers, food

wrappings, stain-resistant fabrics and an array of cosmetics and

sunscreens -- a market expected to exceed $1 trillion a year within a

decade.

 

Preliminary studies suggest that most of these products do not pose

significant risks in their bulk form or embedded in the kinds of

products that so far use them.But the same cannot be said of the

particles themselves, which can pose health risks to workers where

they are made and may cause health or environmental problems as

discarded products break down in landfills. Lab animal studies have

already shown that some carbon nanospheres and nanotubes behave

differently than conventional ultrafine particles, causing fatal

inflammation in the lungs of rodents, organ damage in fish and death

in ecologically important aquatic organisms and soil- dwelling bacteria.

 

An estimated 700 types of nanomaterials are being manufactured at

about 800 facilities in this country alone, prompting several federal

agencies to focus seriously on nano safety. Yet no agency has

developed safety rules specific to nanomaterials. And the approach

being taken by the Environmental Protection Agency, arguably the

furthest along of any regulatory body, is already facing criticism by

some as inadequate.In documents that are now being finalized for

public comment, the agency calls for a " stewardship program " that

would be voluntary.

 

Manufacturers would be asked to alert officials about nanoproducts

they are making and to provide information about environmental or

health risks they have uncovered. But they would not be required to

make such reports or to do special studies.Although the agency may at

some point feel the need to impose stricter controls, the voluntary

approach has the advantage that it can be implemented more quickly,

said Charles Auer, director of the EPA's Office of Pollution

Prevention and Toxics. He added that the agency is not sure it

understands enough about the new materials to know how best to

regulate them. " This way we can develop something, gain experience and

learn more about what we're dealing with, " Auer said.

 

Others, including scientist Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources

Defense Council, which recently withdrew from an EPA advisory group

out of frustration with the direction the agency was going, call that

approach toothless. " I think it's absolutely necessary that we have

enforceable regulations and that we don't put these materials in

commercial products unless we know they can be used safely over the

full life cycle of the product, " Sass said.

 

The most recent batch of published scientific studies on nanomaterials

have not been reassuring. In the past few months: Researchers at the

New Jersey Institute of Technology found that nanoparticles of

aluminum oxide stunt the growth of roots on several crops -- including

soybeans and corn, mainstays of U.S. agriculture. Japanese researchers

found that a kind of nanosphere that some want to use to deliver drugs

or vaccines into the body is a potent stimulator of immune-reaction

genes, perhaps explaining fatal inflammatory responses seen in animals

exposed to nanomaterials. And a California team working with

laboratory-grown cells showed that carbon nanotubes specifically

activate " cell suicide genes. " " Cell growth was retarded, and there

was a doubling of cell deaths, " said study leader Fanqing Frank Chen

of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

 

Chen said factory exposures should be " a big concern, " and added that

many nanospheres are very stable and not likely to break down in the

environment. Congress has begun to take note. At a House Science

Committee hearing Nov. 17, environmental and industry representatives

alike said federal spending on environmental, health and safety

implications of nanotechnology should be $100 million to $200 million

a year, or about 10 percent to 20 percent of the government's $1.1

billion nanotech development budget for fiscal

2006.

 

By contrast, the government is slated to spend $39 million this year

on research whose " primary purpose " is to investigate those issues,

said Clayton Teague, director of the National Nanotechnology

Coordination Office. He said that figure is " probably appropriate, "

given the overall federal investment and the modest number of products

on the market. But David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International

Center for Scholars, which last week released a new inventory of U.S.

nano research, said federal spending on studies truly devoted to

environmental and health concerns is actually only $6 million, with

some topics still completely unaddressed. Some nanospheres, for

example, are extremely slippery, " like the nano version of banana

peels, " said Rejeski, director of the center's foresight and

governance project.

 

With slips and falls a major cause of workplace injury, he said, this

is the kind of thing that deserves attention but can be easily

overlooked, given the lack of an overarching national nanotechnology

research strategy -- something he and others are calling for.Also at

issue is whether industry is footing a big enough share of the safety

research bill. A few large companies, including DuPont, have

significant programs in place.

 

But much of the nanotechnology sector involves small businesses that

are in no position to study the impacts of their products, raising

concerns that answers will come too late. " The limited data now

available are flashing yellow lights that we should not ignore, " said

Richard Denison, a scientist at Environmental Defense, an advocacy

group that is collaborating with the EPA and DuPont on nano safety issues.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

 

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