Laura Roverskov Heggelund

Nanoproducts – what is actually available to European consumers?

It remains unclear which kinds of nanoproducts are available on the European market, although this information is a prerequisite for any kind of exposure and risk assessment. In order to address this lack of information, we have established The Nanodatabase (http://www.nanodb.dk), which is an online inventory of products claimed by manufacturers to contain nanomaterials (NMs) or be based on nanotechnology. The database currently entails 2231 products. The database is unique and includes basic information about the product (name, NM used, location of NM, product category, etc.) as well as a safety evaluation of each individual product according to the NanoRiskCat-framework. Our analysis of products that are currently present in the database shows that most products fall into “personal care” and “clothing” categories (≥300), followed by “sporting goods” and “cleaning” (>200). Silver and titanium dioxide are the most used NMs, but it is not possible to identify the NMs used for almost 60% of the products in the database. The data analysis shows that for most product categories the dominant route of exposure is dermal, and that the exposure potential as well as human and environmental hazard potential of most products is either “high” or “unknown”. In order to address the current lack of reporting by manufacturers when it comes to nanoproducts, we recommend that it is made mandatory to disclose and report any nanomaterials used in a consumer product and it becomes illegal to advertise and market products as “nano” when they have no content of nanomaterials.

Semi-quantitative analysis of solid waste flows from nano-enabled consumer products in Europe, Denmark and the United Kingdom – Abundance, distribution and management

Many nano-enabled consumer products are known to be in the global market. At the same, little is known about the quantity, type, location etc. of the engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) inside the products. This limits the scientific investigations of potential environmental effects of these materials, and especially the knowledge of ENM behaviour and potential effects at the end-of-life stage of the products is scarce. To gain a better understanding of the end-of-life waste treatment of nano-enabled consumer product, we provide an overview of the ENMs flowing into and throughout waste systems in Europe, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Using a nanoproduct inventory (nanodb.dk), we performed a four-step analysis to estimate the most abundant ENMs and in which waste fractions they are present. We found that in terms of number of products: (i) nano silver is the most used ENM in consumer products, and (ii) plastic from used product containers is the largest waste fraction also comprising a large variety of ENMs, though possibly in very small masses. Also, we showed that the local waste management system can influence the distribution of ENMs. It is recommended that future research focus on recycling and landfilling of nano-enabled products since these compartments represent hot spots for end-of-life nanoproducts.