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EPA seeks public Comments on Nano-Silver Case-Study

Published: Friday 13 August 2010

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published a draft document entitled ‘‘Nanomaterial Case Study: Nanoscale Silver in Disinfectant Spray’’ (EPA/600/R–10/081), intended to ‘serve as part of a process to help identify and prioritize scientific and technical information that could be used in conducting comprehensive environmental assessments (CEA) of selected nanomaterials.’

According to the announcement in the 13th August 2010 Federal Register (Vol. 75, No. 156, page 49487), the draft document ‘is intended to highlight what is known and unknown about nanoscale silver (nano-Ag) as part of a process to identify and prioritize information gaps relevant to assessing the broad environmental implications, including potential ecological as well as human health impacts, of nanomaterials’, and ‘does not attempt to draw conclusions regarding potential environmental risks of nanoscale silver; rather, it aims to identify what is known and unknown about nanoscale silver to support future assessment efforts.’

The draft document, which is being issued by the National Center for Environmental Assessment within EPA’s Office of Research and Development, is available on the NCEA home page.

The draft document is open for a 45-day public consultation (beginning on the 13th August 2010, ending on the 27th September 2010); public comments may be submitted online via the commenting website (see Federal Register Notice for more information on other ways to submit comments); deadline: 27th September 2010.

Follow these links to download the full Federal Register Notice(13th August 2010, Vol. 75, No. 156, page 49487), or to download the draft Case-Study document.

 
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For yet unexplained reasons, the German Government’s Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR) (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment) has published a press release on a six months old position paper: An article on the Institute‘s website entitled ‘Nanosilber gehört nicht in Lebensmittel, Textilien und Kosmetika‘(English: 'No room for nanosilver in food, textiles and cosmetics’) (article in German) states: [...] (10th June 2010)
 
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