On 18 October 2011 the EU Commission adopted the Recommendation on the definition of a nanomaterial. According to this recommendation a “Nanomaterial” means:
A natural, incidental or manufactured material containing particles, in an unbound state or as an aggregate or as an agglomerate and where, for 50 % or more of the particles in the number size distribution, one or more external dimensions is in the size range 1 nm – 100 nm.
In specific cases and where warranted by concerns for the environment, health, safety or competitiveness the number size distribution threshold of 50 % may be replaced by a threshold between 1 and 50 %.
By derogation from the above, fullerenes, graphene flakes and single wall carbon nanotubes with one or more external dimensions below 1 nm should be considered as nanomaterials.
Europe is the first area to make a decision on this definition and guidance from the Scientific Committee (SCHENIR) included an argument, that in its opinion “a low mass concentration of nanoparticles in a product may still represent a high number of particles and a mass based distribution can be skewed by the presence of relatively few large and thus heavy particles“. Therefore it considered number size distribution as a more relevant metric for possible effects of nanoparticles than mass concentration.
This is a move away from other existing regulatory / industry specific metrics, which are based on mass and aerodynamic separation and sampling methods and it will be interesting to see how this decision impacts on these other measurement systems in the future. The dosage metric for inhaled delivery of drug products is one area which comes to mind, breathing / medical air definitions together with ambient environment and vehicle exhaust monitoring.
It is still very early days in ‘nano material’ safety. We continue to investigate the impact of micron sized particles on environmental health and there will be some years of discussion and development of standards and methods. I’m sure that discussion will follow on how we define the size measurement, based on method used, but whatever the method I suspect that it has got to be easier to measure dimensions rather than trying to capture particles in a specific size range < 100nm and then weigh them (and by the way this could be debated with micron sized particles too) ?
Filter Integrity Limited is proud to announce that it has entered into a partnership with IBR Laboratories of Grass Lake Michigan USA to promote and develop filter testing and performance validation capabilities. Andrew Chalmers, Director at Filter Integrity Limited commented: I’m personally delighted to have agreed a partnership with IBR Laboratories. I’ve worked with Susan and her team over […]
It’s all happening in the first full week in September which brings two conferences / exhibitions for particle scientists in the UK. EAC 2011 the European Aerosol Conference from 4th – 9th Sept in Manchester this year promises to be the biggest and best yet, with a packed schedule and a good number of exhibition stands. FIL will be joining […]
The Filtration Society, which is a not for profit organsation with the aim to advance and disseminate knowledge on the design and use of filtration and separation techniques in industry, commerce and other walks of life announces Filter Media 5 the fifth in a series of training seminar, conference and exhibitions on filter media, to be held at […]
Following the launch of the new Nano instruments at FILTECH 2011 the natural development of the MFP range of filter media testing stands has followed. MFP ULPA Nano takes the well established MFP automation and control and adds: the new Differential Electrical Mobility Classifier or DEMC allowing the generation of stream of mono-disperse particles in the 3 – 800 nm range from […]
I attended the Cambridge Particles meeting for the first time, held in the Engineering Department of Cambridge University on Friday 13th May 2011. I didn’t know what to expect, but the meeting had a friendly academic atmosphere, with scientists and technicians present having a range of interests in aerosol science, although as exhibited by the […]
Just got back from attending the Aerosols in the Environment technical meeting at the Institute of Physics in London. This was a joint meeting with the IOP Environmental Group and the Aerosol Society and was well attended by 35 people from a range of academia, meteorological groups and aerosol characterisation instrument suppliers. As some reading this may know, my […]
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