Yet, under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, the FDA can't require cosmetics and personal-care companies to substantiate product safety and performance claims.
In October, Dr. Hansen sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, asking the agency to require cosmetics and sunscreen manufacturers to run safety tests on nano scale ingredients.
The agency does require cosmetics manufacturers to ensure that their products are safe for use; in 2006, the agency created its own task force to investigate the safety of engineered nanomaterials.
The FDA does not require cosmetics companies, a $50 billion industry, to test products or ingredients for safety before they are sold.
The FDA requires cosmetics to have an ingredient declaration but cosmetic products and ingredients are not subject to FDA premarket approval [ 31].
The firm's commitment to environmental sustainability also played into the decision not to enter China, where regulations required cosmetics to be tested on animals.
Unlike the European Union's Cosmetics Directive, which requires expiration dates on cosmetic products whose "minimum durability" is less than 30 months, there are no regulations under U.S. law to require cosmetic companies to print expiration dates on products.
His solution: Require cosmetics companies to register, keep adequate safety data, disclose it to the Government and file injury reports.
In an attempt to allay these fears, from 2013 EU regulation will require all cosmetics using nanoparticles to state so on their labels.
In a statement, the FDA said that it could do little else to compel the company: "We do not have the legal authority to require a cosmetics firm to provide product safety information".
"Because the FDA cannot require a cosmetics company to submit data before marketing a product or require a company to tell the FDA when they receive a report that one of its products has caused an adverse reaction in a user, the FDA may not know when there are problems," Putnam, an FDA spokesman, says.
