By Andrew McDougall, 18-Mar-2016

BASF’s Dialogforum Nano has called for clearer guidance and transparency in the future in order to work with nanomaterials in cosmetics safely and effectively, ensuring the needs of public authorities, consumers and workers are fulfilled, while supporting innovation.

Discussing several industries impacted by nanomaterials, one key focus of the forum was on transparency within the cosmetics industry, in particular referring to EU cosmetics products notification portal (CPNP).

The CPNP is the European product and substance inventory for cosmetics created as part of EU cosmetics legislation, and requires that all cosmetics products that are marketed in the EU be registered before being placed on the market, including nano ingredients.

One of the issues highlighted in the Dialogforum is that with so much information things can become complicated and that the existing information-based instruments should be exploited fully to enable the general public to derive more benefit from their advantages and potential.

The example given is that the information that has been gathered through the EU cosmetics products notification portal needs to be made ‘publicly available as legally required.’

Although it states that the CPNP has its strengths such as information being made available to the European Commission, the report goes on to state that it does not provide traceability along the value chain, and that regulation has been ‘weakly enforced’ in relation to nanomaterials.

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