Reading reports of government plans for the regulation of nanotechnology sometimes feels like being on death row. The outcome is inevitable, and all you can do is hope that it will be short and painless. The European Commission has been debating regulations for the best part of a decade,and now apparently has been given a deadline of 2011 by the European Parliament to “properly regulate nanotechnology.”
Plastics & Rubber Weekly reports that the Belgian Environment Minister, Paul Magnette proposed five elements that should be included in nanotechnology legislation, including
- A register of nanomaterials used within the EU is established, so regulators can trace the origin of any nanoparticles to their source if they cause health or environmental problems.
- Manufacturers and retailers inform consumers of the presence of nanomaterials in their products
- Regulations provide for risk evaluation and management of nanomaterials at an EU level
- Member states also draft integrated national strategies for nanotechnology risk management, information dissemination and monitoring
- Claims made on labels of products containing nanomaterials are controlled
As with any legislation the devil will be in the detail, and that will determine whether the result is to shift all production of basic nanomaterials out of the EU or simply create a lot of meaningless labels that consumers won’t understand. Unfortunately, that plays into the hands of pressure groups who managed to influence public opinion against all forms of GMOs based on some rather dodgy science, and leaves companies using nanomaterials between a rock and hard place. Do they add a (nano) suffix to ingredients and risk a consumer backlash, or do they simply fudge the definition – many commonly used materials contain quite a range of particle sizes, and so adjusting to the mean size to 100.001nm could easily sidestep any EU legislation.
But the bottom line is that anyone involved in nanomaterials would like the politicians to make their minds up about regulation. Many companies are unwilling to spend large sums on developing technologies and products they may be outlawed or perceived differently by consumers as a result of pending legislation. The sooner that rules are in place the easier it will be to justify developing nanomaterial based products.
More sabre rattling from the the European Parliament who passed a “non binding opinion” with 391 votes in favour and three against, demanding that all nanomaterials should be considered as new substances, and that existing legislation does not take into account the risks associated with nanotechnology.They also demanded that consumer products containing nanomaterials must be labelled ‘nano’.
It’s a repeat of the techniques used by anti technology lobbies and is a very effective strategy that goes something like this:
- Find some evidence that something is dangerous – note that it doesn’t matter if 99.99% of research shows no dangers, parliamentarians are not scientists and it’s unlikely that they will ever check
- Find a few more scientific papers and deliberately misinterpret them in order to back up your agenda
- Use this ‘scientific evidence’ to ‘prove’ that the technology is dangerous – if it turns out you were wrong just ignore any evidence to the contrary and stick to your story
- Once you have sown the idea that a technology is dangerous, call for labelling in an attempt to use public ignorance of science to keep products off the market.
The flaw in this argument is that it only works for things that people might eat or drink, so sticking a “contains nanotech” label on a mobile phone or solar panel won’t have any impact. I sometimes wonder whether groups who try to confuse nanotechnology with GMOs are deliberately trying to confuse the issues to spread fear, or whether they are simply too stupid to tell the difference between various bits of science and spend all day trying to connect their washing machines to the Internet while trying to make phone calls with a plastic chair.
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