Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Advances and challenges towards consumerization of nanomaterials

Nature Nanotechnology volume 15, pages 964–965 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

The Nanodatabase (www.nanodb.dk) is an online inventory of products — which can either be bought in Europe or ordered online and shipped to a European location — that according to their manufacturers or other stakeholders contain nanomaterials. It contained a little more than a 1,000 products when it was launched in 2012. On 1 November 2020, scientists at the department of environmental engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, including the present authors, added product number 5,000. Such a high number of commercial products suggests that nanotechnology and nanomaterials have entered what is known as consumerization1. Consumerization is signified by the fact that a given technology goes all the way from the research and development in a laboratory to enterprise and then into our stores, homes, pockets and bodies. Nanotechnology and nanomaterials must be considered as part of a mass market, rather than a niche market as it perhaps was until a few years ago.

From the outset, The Nanodatabase was meant to provide an overview of consumer products in Europe, complementing the inventory developed by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies2, which has focused primarily on products commercialized in North America and Asia3. The information collected includes details such as the name of the products, the connection to nanomaterials as claimed by the producers, the country of origin, the nanomaterials used, the location of the nanomaterial in the product, and, importantly, the most likely human or environmental exposure route. The Nanodatabase is also equipped with a number of analytical tools, thereby allowing anyone to sort and extract and display data in different ways4.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Distribution of products included in The Nanodatabase.

References

  1. Jolly, V. K. Commercializing New Technologies (Harvard Business School Press, 1997).

  2. Consumer products inventory. Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies http://www.nanotechproject.tech/cpi/ (2020).

  3. Vance, M. E. et al. Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 6, 1769–1780 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Hansen, S. F. et al. Environ. Sci. Nano 3, 169–180 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Harmonised classification and labelling consultations. ECHA https://echa.europa.eu/harmonised-classification-and-labelling-consultation/-/substance-rev/26524/term (2020).

  6. Harmonised classification - Annex VI of Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP Regulation). ECHA https://echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/cl-inventory-database/-/discli/details/100661 (2020).

  7. Clausen, L. P. W. & Hansen, S. F. Nat. Nanotechnol. 13, 766–768 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Steffen Foss Hansen, Oliver Foss Hessner Hansen & Maria Bille Nielsen

Authors
  1. Steffen Foss Hansen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Oliver Foss Hessner Hansen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maria Bille Nielsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steffen Foss Hansen.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hansen, S.F., Hansen, O.F.H. & Nielsen, M.B. Advances and challenges towards consumerization of nanomaterials. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 964–965 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-00819-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-00819-7

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing