Nanomaterials Defined?
Confusion still
remains over
what exactly
nanomaterials are
being defined as.
by Sean Milmo
European Correspondent
milmocw@rodpub.com
The European Commission, the European Union’s Brussels-based executive, has at last published a definition of nanomaterials. But both environmentalists and industry,
particularly the coatings sector, are unhappy
with it.
The EU has introduced in recent years several
pieces of legislation, which mention nanomaterials in their texts but there has been no clear definition of what exactly nanomaterials are.
Over a year ago the European Parliament
instructed the Commission to draw up a “com-
prehensive science-based definition for use in
EU legislation.”
Now the Commission has finally come up
with one. But it is considered to be so broad by
industry that they claim it covers substances that
are normally not regarded as being nanomateri-
als while excluding some of those that are gen-
erally seen as being nano.
Environmentalists and NGOs (
non-govern-mental organizations) on the other hand argue
that the definition is too narrow and will enable
nanomaterials to escape proper testing for their
potential hazards.
The coatings sector and its suppliers are
angry because under the definition mineral or
inorganic pigments and fillers can be categorized
as being nanomaterials.
“The definition does not apply to paint formulations,” said Jacques Warnon, technical director for the European trade association for
coatings producers (Cepe). “But there is a big
concern that it could mean new testing requirements for suppliers of coatings materials, particularly pigment producers and importers,
which will ultimately affect coatings companies.
The additional costs will be passed on to them.
“Mineral pigments, which have been around
for a long time and are not designed to be nanomaterials, are affected because they usually have
a certain amount of nanoparticles within them,
although these have been shown to be safe,”
Warnon said.
The Commission decided that nanomaterials
should be defined on the basis of the size of the
particles within a material, without any regard
to whether they are a hazard or risk. Identifica-
tion by size would cover not only manufactured
nanomaterials but also those that are “natural
(and) incidental.”
With respect to what is ‘nanoscale’ the Com-
mission followed the definition applied by the
Geneva-based International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) of a size range from
around one nanometer to 100 nanometers.
The most controversial aspect of the Commission’s definition is its decision to base the threshold
for the classifying of a material as a nanomaterial
on ‘number size distribution’ or the number of
nanoparticles in relation to the total number of
particles. The other option was to have a threshold
derived from mass or the ratio of weight of
nanoparticles to total weight of the material.
Furthermore the Commission chose a threshold of 50 percent nanoparticles for a material to be
classified as nano against a one percent cut-off,
which it proposed in a draft definition issued last
year. This big increase in the threshold has outraged
some NGOs but industry has sharply criticized it as
well on the grounds that by using numbers rather
