I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this initially but there’s a news item on Nanowerk about a European public consultation on a definition for nanomaterials. From the news item,
The European Commission has requested the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) to provide advice on the essential elements of a science-based working definition of “nanomaterials” and, specifically, to identify the most appropriate metrics to define materials at nanoscale, taking into account reported size ranges and other relevant characteristics and corresponding metrics, characteristics, physico-chemical properties and thresholds.
In line with its procedures for stakeholder dialogue, published on 15 September 2007, the European Commission is launching a public consultation on the pre-consultation opinion (pdf) approved by written procedure on 6 July 2010.
I’m going to blame my confusion on being tired and some bureaucratic English from Europe (I find Canadian bureaucratic English marginally easier to read—it’s a thin margin).
This process is almost identical to Health Canada’s process (the Canadian agency didn’t promote as widely but it did give a significantly longer time to respond). A preliminary European definition has been developed (my posting and opinion about that July 6, 2010) and now there’s a request for feedback (which these agencies have labelled as a public consultation).
There’s one more difference between the European Commission and Health Canada ‘public consultations’, the Europeans have created an interactive Consultation Response Form while the Canadians have done this,
Interested parties are encouraged to provide comments and suggestions by August 31, 2010.
You can visit the relevant Health Canada page here.
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