The regulation of nano/biocide-treated articles is not keeping up with the development of new products and falls short on ensuring safety.
At a time of increased public health awareness, it is important to provide clarity on the use and regulation of nano/biocide-treated articles and their safety and impact on human health and the environment. Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) Europe, along with 12 other health, environment, and justice organisations, wrote to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) seeking clarifications on both the applicable legal framework, and risk management measures in place for such products.
 Today on the EU market you can find products such as face masks treated with silver, zinc oxide, or copper nanoparticles, “anticovid” paper containing nanostructured zinc-silver, or nanosilver-containing surface disinfectants - the list goes on. Demand is growing for antimicrobial and antiviral nanocoatings, and the global nano-colloidal silver market is expected to rise at a significant rate between now and 2025 due to “pandemic protection accelerating investment in nanotechnology”.
In their public response (available here) ECHA confirmed that even if treated articles/products contain biocides (therefore potentially harmful substances), we have to trust that the manufacturers will only use approved active substances or substances covered by the Biocides Review Programme. ECHA also indicated that we must trust manufacturers to follow the Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) labelling requirements. Yet the 2019 BEF-1 report (report of the first harmonised enforcement project on treated articles) reveals that these labels provided inadequate information in 36% of cases, and that basic information was often missing.
We therefore have reason to suspect that a number of the nano/biocide-treated articles that are increasingly coming on the market since the COVID-19 pandemic are in fact not compliant with labelling requirements under the BPR.
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