Inventory of consumer products containing nanos

– At the European level

• A 2010 inventory conducted jointly by BEUC European Consumers’ Organisation and ANEC listed 475 consumer products reported to contain nanomaterials present on the European market in 2010, with the majority being health and fitness products. More information here.
• The inventory “Nanomaterials in consumer products: Update of products on the European market in 2010” by the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), commissioned by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (VWA) and published in 2011, had 858 products in 2010. The fastest growing product categories were personal care and cosmetics.

– At the Member State level

• In Germany: the database made by the NGO Friends of the Earth identified, in 2020, about 200 consumer products containing nanomaterials on the German market and the NGO invites German consumers to help complete the list.

• In Switzerland, a distributor published in April 2010 a “list of nanoproducts” on sale in its stores, on the initiative of the Community of interest of the Swiss retail trade (CICDS)⁴A Code of Conduct has been adopted by the major Swiss retailers in the field of nano in which they commit themselves to request information from their manufacturers and suppliers concerning the specific or supposed effect of the products, their composition and possible risks, and to inform the consumers in a transparent way..

• In 2012, the Danish Nanodatabase went online; In March, it listed 120 food products in Denmark.
• In 2012, the collaborative database Open Food Facts listed the ingredients of many food products available on the French market, including additives that may contain nanoparticles (E171, E551, …).
• In October 2015, the NGO Center for Food Safety posted an inventory of approximately 300 food products containing nanomaterials in the US, updated in early 2018.
• In March 2017, the association Agir pour l’Environnement (APE) launched the website https://infonano.agirpourlenvironnement.org/additif-e171/categorie-alimentation/, a database listing more than 200 food products suspected of containing nanoparticles (less than 50 by 2022).

Inventories exist, but they are currently not sufficiently precise and reliable… or inaccessible to the general public.

• The first version of the “catalog” of nanomaterials used in cosmetic products placed on the market in the European Union, posted online mid-June 2017 by the European Commission, does not provide specific product or brand names but only the categories of products in which nano substances are found. At the end of 2019, a second version of the European catalog was published, with a reduced number of nanomaterials compared to the first version of the catalog.
• At the beginning of 2018, the DGCCRF indicated that it was able to identify, thanks to the “Cosmetic Products Notification Portal” (CPNP) of the European Commission, around 250 persons based in France that have declared, at EU level, the use of at least one nanomaterial; more than 11,000 product references are involved, but not publicly available today.
• In 2019, the association Agir pour l’Environnement (APE) launched the site https://dentifrice-infoconso.agirpourlenvironnement.org, a database listing, initially 271 toothpastes suspected of containing nanoparticles of titanium dioxide. By the end of 2021, the number had dropped to 224, so nearly 50 fewer toothpastes.
• Several other “guides” or “applications” have been made by NGOs or brands to identify nanos in cosmetics or, conversely, to find “nano-free” cosmetics, but their reliability is limited, either because they rely on the (sometimes misleading) statements of manufacturers or because they are too old:
  • Friends of the Earth Australia’s Safe Sunscreen Guide summer 2010-2011, December 2010
  • The “Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety database” and the Sunscreen Guide created by the American NGO Environmental Working Group (EWG)
  • The app Clean Beauty, from the brand Officinea, deciphers the composition of cosmetics and identifies nanomaterials.

The legislation does not yet force producers and distributors to label the presence of nanomaterials in their products, as is the case for in cosmetics, biocides and food.

The R-nano register does not allow precise identification of the categories of products concerned (or the references of these products).

Nanomaterials do not (or very rarely) appear  either in the Environmental and Sanitary Declaration Sheets (ESDS) or the Safety Data Sheets (SDS).

It is therefore necessary to cross-reference sources⁵A few documents can help you, including:
– the European NanoData platform (132 nano products in the construction sector in June 2022)
– Nano Pigments Inventory, ECHA, 2018: more than 80 nano-sized pigments identified on the European market
– The nanoshop.com website allows to find nanomaterials used in construction (glass, metal, …).
– At the beginning of 2016, there were 19 products in the “sealing nanotechnologies” category of the Italian website http://www.ediliziafaidate.it/fr/22-nanotechnologies-d-etancheite
– Elcosh NANO – Construction Nanomaterial Inventory, interview manufacturers and suppliers but with no guarantee of being able to identify nanomaterials in finished products – except through laboratory testing.

• Danish NanoDatabase lists more than 500 products containing nano silver in 2018.
• Nanosilver in Food and Food Contact Products is a list of approximately 60 food products (including packaging) containing nano-silver listed by the Center for Food Safety and published in December 2014.
• 563 articles containing nano-silver at the beginning of 2012 and 80 articles integrating colloidal silver for therapeutic purposes were counted by Manon Berge for her master’s thesis in sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal entitled “The development of nanosilver; between hygienic representations, techno-scientific determinism and the market: a sociological analysis”.
• BEUC and ANEC jointly identified 109 products containing nanosilver in Europe in 2012⁶see their report Nano – Very small and everywhere, A technological magic silver bullet or a serious safety risk? and the database updated to February 28, 2013.
• Pages 20-22 of the Friends of the Earth Australia report, Nanosilver: policy failure puts public health at risk, list products containing nanosilver in 2011.
  
• The annex of the American petition addressed in 2008 by the NGO ICTA to the EPA for the classification of nanosilver as a pesticide contains nearly 260 products including nanosilver sold to United States and from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, New Zealand, and Germany
• Another commercial source: http://www.ec21.com, reports nearly 461 products from more than 235 companies as of February 2012, for nano products claiming to contain silver nanoparticles (up from 526 products for more than 264 companies in 2009).

• AnCatt produces anti-corrosion paints (aircraft, marine and automotive uses), including AnCatt Miracle iBarrier ™ with Conductive Polymer Nano Dispersion (CPND) said to be a “non-toxic, environmentally friendly product that outperforms zinc-based coatings by six times in longevity”. This could be an alternative to zinc…
• Applied Thin Films
• FlightShield offers paints and varnishes for aircraft and automobiles
• Glonatech uses carbon nanotubes and displays its distribution network in Europe
• Triple (?)
• CHOOSE NanoTech is focused on industrial (aircraft, automotive) and consumer products, and also has a distribution network in Europe.
• General Nano: the products are clearly named “nano”.
• HR ToughGuard: Surface coating products are used in the following areas: Aviation, Automotive, Land and sea transportation, wind turbines and solar panels
• Surfactis Technologies is a French company that manufactures surface modification products, oleophobic and hydrophobic, including anti graffiti
• Tesla NanoCoatings manufactures anti-corrosion products containing carbon nanotubes combined with zinc.