City Council to Consider Regulation of Nanoparticles

The use of nanoparticles in the city of Berkeley will be more closely monitored if the Berkeley City Council approves an ordinance tonight requiring disclosure of possession of the materials.

The ordinance, which according to Councilmember Betty Olds would make Berkeley the first city to regulate nanoparticles, requires users of nanoparticles to disclose to the city how much of the substance they have and how they will handle it.

Impetus for the ordinance came as UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the plans for the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research facility that opened this year. Some residents have voiced concern that nanoparticles may be medically hazardous.

Nanoparticles are made for use in a variety of industrial tasks, from building stronger materials to manufacturing clothing. The particles, which are at largest 100 nanometers in size, have many of the same physical properties as gas molecules. A nanometer is one billionth of one meter.

Some nanoparticles may take on different chemical properties than their original materials as they are shrunk. In addition, their size may allow them to enter the body, with potentially dangerous outcomes, said Robert Clear, chair of the city’s Environmental Advisory Commission which submitted the ordinance to the council.

Even nanoparticles that are not toxic in composition may be detrimental to health due to their ability to get inside the bloodstream and lungs and generally block standard biological functions, Clear said.

However, not all nanoparticles may be harmful, and some nanoparticles are found naturally in sea salt and in cathedral glass windows, said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.

“Some people are advancing the argument that nanoparticles are inherently dangerous because of their size, and that’s just not true,” Wozniak said.

Clear said it is uncertain whether UC Berkeley and the Berkeley lab would have to report their manufactured nanoparticle inventory to the city.

While no one at the lab could be reached to comment specifically on nanoparticles, Erik Anderson, deputy director of the lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics, said safety precautions are always of the utmost concern.

“At LBNL, we have very elaborate safety precautions,” he said. “The first dollar is spent on safety.”

Councilmember Darryl Moore said part of the ordinance’s importance is to let the community know that these kinds of particles are becoming increasingly important in manufacturing and science.

“Disclosure at this early stage is a beginning step,” Moore said, adding that he was still deciding how to vote on the ordinance. “Nanotechnology is the cutting edge of science today … (but) there’s a lot of things we don’t know about nanotechnology.”

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