U.S. General Accounting Office Provides Recommendations to USEPA on the Regulation of Nanomaterials
This post was written by David Wagner.
Underscoring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) intent to issue rules regulating nanomaterials this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) raised some concerns and offered remedies in its report issued late last month titled, “Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials Are Widely Used in Commerce, but EPA Faces Challenges in Regulating Risk”.
In the report, GAO (an investigative arm of the U.S. Congress) stated its concerns that products with nanomaterials may be entering the market without USEPA review of all available information on their potential risk. Moreover, USEPA faces challenges in effectively regulating nanomaterials that may be released in air, water, and waste because it lacks the technology to monitor and characterize these materials or the relevant statutes include volume-based regulatory thresholds that may be too high to effectively regulate the production and disposal of nanomaterials.
Before offering recommendations, the GAO report discussed the growing world market for products that contain nanomaterials, which is expected to reach $2.6 trillion by 2015. The report identified a variety of products that currently incorporate nanomaterials already available in commerce across the following eight sectors: automotive; defense and aerospace; electronics and computers; energy and environment; food and agriculture; housing and construction; medical and pharmaceutical; and personal care, cosmetics, and other consumer products. Within each of these sectors, GAO also identified a wide variety of other uses that are currently under development and are expected to be available in the future. According to GAO, the extent to which nanomaterials present a risk to human health and the environment “depends on a combination of the toxicity of specific nanomaterials and the route and level of exposure to these materials.”
GAO’s report includes several recommendations to USEPA and indicated that these recommendations are already “in process” at the Agency:
- Complete its plan to issue a Significant New Use rule for nanomaterials.
- Modify Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) pesticide registration guidelines to require applicants to identify nanomaterial ingredients in pesticides.
- Complete its plan to clarify that nanoscale ingredients in already registered pesticides, as well as in those products for which registration is being sought, are to be reported to EPA and that EPA will consider nanoscale ingredients to be new.
- Should consider revising the Inventory Update under TSCA so that it will capture information on the production and use of nanomaterials and so that the agency will receive periodic updates on this material."
- Make greater use of the Agency’s authorities to gather information under existing environmental statutes. Specifically, USEPA should:
- complete its plan to use data gathering and testing authorities under TSCA to gather information on nanomaterials, including production volumes, methods of manufacture and processing, exposure and release, as well as available health and safety studies; and
- use information-gathering provisions of the Clean Water Act to collect information about potential discharges containing nanomaterials.
