Nanotech in your vitamins

The ability of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate the safety of dietary supplements using nanomaterials is severely limited by lack of information, lack of resources and the agency's lack of statutory authority in certain critical areas, according to a new expert report released by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN). The report, A Hard Pill To Swallow: Barriers to Effective FDA Regulation of Nanotechnology-Based Dietary Supplements, details the main problems at FDA in regulating nano-enabled dietary supplements and offers a host of recommendations for improving oversight of such products.

Current law requires supplement manufacturers to disclose limited information about their products, and what information is available is a result of dietary supplement manufacturers touting the use of nanotechnology when marketing their products, according to the report. "While it is not possible to precisely determine the prevalence of dietary supplements using engineered nanoparticles, it is likely that the public's exposure to these products will grow significantly in the next several years," says Lisa Barclay, also a co-author of the report.

Steve - this is another reason why you use a resource such as Nutritional Concepts to do the work for you. We screen any product we carry for nanoparticles. At this point in time, we do not endorse any products with nanomaterials because their is no data ensuring that they are safe.