Toward Safe and Sustainable Nanomaterials: Chemical Information Call-in to Manufacturers of Nanomaterials by California as a Case Study
Abstract
While nanomaterials are found in a number of applications, much is still unknown about their properties. Therefore, there are concerns as to their potential health and environmental effects. As the first step to understanding the potential risks of nanomaterials, the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) requested information from manufacturers of certain nanomaterials. The Department was given the authority to make such requests under California’s Health and Safety Code, sections 57018-57020. DTSC had requested information to manufacturers of CNTs in 2009 and DTSC expand the call-in to include nanometal oxides (TiO2, CeO2, ZnO), nanometals (Ag, nano zero valent Fe), and quantum dots in late 2010. DTSC asked information to manufacturers regarding analytical test methods, fate and transport in the environment, and other relevant data.
This article reviews potential impacts by nanomaterials and the status of California nanoindustry, and addresses efforts and processes to facilitate data call-in, and finally, expectations and benefits of data call-in by DTSC are evaluated.
Published
Issue
Section
EJLT is an open access journal, aiming to disseminate academic work and perspectives as widely as possible to the benefit of the author and the author’s readers. It is the assumption of the EJLT that authors who publish in the journal wish their work to be available as freely and as widely as possible through the open access publishing channel.
Authors who publish with EJLT will retain copyright and moral rights in the underlying work but will grant all users the rights to copy, store and print for non-commercial use copies of their work. Commercial mirroring may also be carried out with the consent of the journal. The work must remain as published – without redaction or editing – and must clearly state the identity of the author and the originating EJLT url of the article. Any commercial use of the author’s work - apart from mirroring - requires the permission of the author and any aspects of the article which are the property of EJLT (e.g. typographical format) requires permission from EJLT.
Authors can sometimes become no longer contactable (through, for example, death or retirement). If this occurs, any rights in the work will pass to the European Journal of Law and Technology which will continue to make the work available in as wide a manner as possible to achieve the aims of open access and ensuring that an author's work continues to be available. An author - or their estate - can recover these rights from EJLT by providing contact information.
The European Journal of Law and Technology holds rights in format, publication and dissemination.
EJLT, as a non-commercial organisation - which receives donations to allow it to continue publishing – must retain information on reader access to journal articles. This means that we will not give permission to mirror the journal unless we can be provided with full details as to reader access to each and every journal article. We prefer and encourage deep linking rather than mirroring. Encouragement is thus given for all users – commercial and non-commercial – to provide indexes and links to articles in the EJLT where the index or link points to the location of the article on the EJLT server, rather than to stored copies on other servers.
Please contact the European Journal of Law and Technology if you are in any doubt as to what this statement of use covers.
