Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

Growing up in the 1970s, Mischief Night was a big deal for me.  When I was in grade school, hoards of us kids took to our neighborhood just after dark to wreak innocent havoc.  More fun than Halloween, I recall soaping up car windows and decorating neighbors' trees with toilet paper.  (What were our parents thinking?)

When a wonder toy called Silly String hit the stores, Mischief Night turned psychedelic with crazy vibrant colors issuing in long streams from an aerosol can!  And what was the harm?  Silly String simply dried up and blew away.  Who knew that we might actually be spewing a brew of toxic chemicals?  Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign today released the results of a nationwide poll conducted in August by renowned pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners.  The most striking finding:  Majorities of Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats strongly support adoption of new legislation that would give EPA the power to immediately restrict the use of dangerous chemicals.

It seems that all that's left is for Congress to act …  Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

It's got pictures of kids and families.  People of all colors.  Gentle hands cradling our fragile planet.  A hard hat resting on a pair of worn work gloves and a hammer.  It says the coalition is "people like you."  It bears an uncanny resemblance to the website of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign, of which EDF is a founding member.  But dig deeper and you'll discover that the website of the "Coalition for Chemical Safety" is actually created and run by industry. Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

In an opinion piece titled "Chemical regulators have overreached" in the August 27, 2009 issue of Nature, two prominent animal welfare advocates claim that vastly larger numbers of chemicals will have to be tested under the European Union's REACH regulation than previously estimated, and hence that 20 times more laboratory animals will be sacrificed.  They call for a moratorium on some animal tests.  Well, a closer look reveals that it's the opiners themselves that have greatly overreached.

[Update 8/28:  The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has just issued this press release also disputing the findings of this new study.]

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Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

I hate to say it, but Friends of the Earth, Consumers Union, and the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) have done a disservice to good science and policy with their new superficial report Manufactured Nanomaterials and Sunscreens: Top Reasons for Precaution.  Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

[Note:  This post was originally posted as a comment on Gina Solomon's blog post on Huffington Post.  The context is a pending budget proposal from the Governor's office in California to eliminate the State's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) under CalEPA and disperse some but not all of its functions to other agencies.  This proposal, if implemented, would in my view be truly tragic.  If you agree, make your voice heard!]  Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Some months ago, my colleague John Balbus posted here about studies finding that when multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are injected into the abdominal cavities of mice, they induce inflammation and mesothelioma-like reactions similar to those caused by asbestos.  He appropriately cautioned that – among other critical questions – these studies had not demonstrated that inhaled MWCNTs could actually move out of the lung and into the tissues where asbestos gives rise to its effects.  Well, that particular dot now appears to have been connected. Read more »

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

It's been nearly a year since EPA launched its voluntary Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program (NMSP) – and over three years since EPA was urged, by a diverse group of stakeholders, to do so only in conjunction with the development of mandatory reporting rules as a backstop and to limit the duration of the basic part of the program to at most six months.

EPA ignored that advice, and proceeded with an open-ended voluntary program and no development of backstop rules.  Now EPA has issued its first evaluation of the NMSP.  So what did EPA find? Read more »

Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

In 2004, Gunter Oberdorster and colleagues demonstrated that upon inhalation, ultrafine particles, the dimensions of which are measured in nanometers, can move from the nasal passages of rodents to the brain via a specialized nerve called the olfactory bulb.  The evolutionary purpose of the olfactory bulb is to relay information about odors directly and rapidly from the nose to the brain. 

The extent to which rapid transit via the olfactory bulb is a significant potential route of exposure to engineered nanomaterials is still an open question.  But two new papers add support for the relevance of this intriguing exposure pathway, raising important questions regarding the safety of inhaled nanoparticles. 

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John Balbus, M.D., M.P.H., is Chief Health Scientist.

Some 216 delegates representing 26 countries converged on the largest city in China last week for the 7^th meeting of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical Committee (TC 229) on Nanotechnologies.

In China, the turtle symbolizes cosmic order, strength, endurance and wisdom.  In the US, the turtle has come to symbolize slow progress and not keeping up with the times.  Which representation better captures what's going on in ISO's TC 229?   Maybe a little of both. Read more »