The European Commission recognizes a need to engage the public on the use of nanomaterials, considering two alternatives: to set up an observatory for nanomaterials or use a nanomaterial registry, as several EU nations have already done, or are considering.

June 2017 in Montreal, Canada As Health Safety and Environment Theme Co-chair, please accept my invitation to submit an abstract about your work on safety for the 2017 TAPPI International Nanotechnology Conference for Renewable Materials!

The Canadian government has proposed a regulation which would ban the use of microbeads in toiletries by July, 2018 and natural health products and non-prescription drugs by July, 2019.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed a list of 10 high priority chemicals for risk assessment, as mandated under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg Act), passed in June 2016 to update the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.  

In their recent article, Robinson et al., (2016) identify that with the increasing use of nanotechnology, "the curation of nanomaterial data into electronic resources is crucial to [realize] the potential of nanotechnology to deliver benefits to society whilst having acceptable impacts upon human health and the environment".