FIRMS SHOULD PERFORM EARLY SAFETY TESTING ON NANOTECH PRODUCTS
Firms should make safety research on nanoparticles a priority in their product design processes, because the FDA's limited resources do not allow the agency to fully research the potential safety risks of nanotechnology, experts say.
Because the actual risks to humans associated with nanotechnology are not known, a lack of safety data will likely impede the FDA approval process for devicemakers that use nanotechnology in their products, said Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for policy.
Nanoscale materials may be capable of going places in the body that conventional materials cannot reach and of behaving differently due to their small size, said Stacey Lynn Harper of the Environmental Health Sciences Center's division of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University. "Current toxicology tools may not be adequate" to address this, she said.
Still, there is no credible scientific evidence that nanomaterials as currently used pose a threat to human safety, said Martin Philbert, a professor of toxicology and the executive director of the Center for Risk Science and Communication.