Two Democratic legislators have introduced a bill that would create an FDA program to assess the potential health and safety effects of nano-technology ingredients in various consumer products.  Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) introduced the “Nanotechnology Safety Act of 2010,” S. 2942, last week. Their introductory remarks here.

The FDA established a Nanotechnology Task Force, which issued a report in July 2007. In the task force report, recommendations were made regarding FDA’s future direction for regulating nanomaterial-containing products. Guidance development was included as one the recommendations. The FDA’s Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Science and Clinical Pharmacology met In 2008. Among the agenda topics was a discussion of issues pertaining to the use of nanotechnology in drug manufacturing, drug delivery, or drug products.  Later, FDA held a public meeting to gather information that will assist the agency in further implementing the recommendations of the Nanotechnology Task Force Report relating to the development of agency guidance documents concerning nanotechnology.

The bill would create a program for the scientific investigation of nanoscale materials included or intended for inclusion in FDA-regulated products, to address the potential toxicology of such materials, the effects of such materials on biological systems, and interaction of such materials with biological systems.  Specifically, FDA would be charged to assess scientific literature and data on general nanoscale material interactions with biological systems and on specific nanoscale materials of concern to Food and Drug Administration, and collect, synthesize, interpret, and disseminate scientific information and data related to the interactions of nanoscale materials with biological systems.

Nanotechnology applications in drug development are likely to have a significant impact on the products that FDA regulates. Products containing nanomaterials are being investigated for potential applications as therapeutics, and some products containing nanoscale materials are already on the market. While some of these nanomaterials are nanoscale versions of larger materials used in approved products, other nanomaterials are novel and have never been used in drug products. In 2009, the FDA introduced the “Nanotechnology Initiative“, a collaborative effort between FDA and the Alliance for NanoHealth.

The proposed law would also require a report from FDA by 2012 that includes a review of the coordination of activities under the program with other departments and agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The bill would send $25 million annual funding to the agency for the program. The bill was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,

Many readers of MassTortDefense know that nanotechnology refers to a new field of technology that seeks to manipulate and control products, really matter, on the atomic and molecular scale, typically 100 nanometers or smaller. To give some sense of scale, one nanometer is one billionth, or 10-9 of a meter. A nanometer compared to a meter is the roughly the same ratio as that of a baseball to the size of the Earth. Or another analogy, a nanometer is the length a man’s whiskers grow in the time it takes him to lift his razor to his face to shave. We have posted on this topic here, here, and here.