For Release: March 25, 2015

EPA is granting some of the requests of the petition for Rulemaking on Nanoscale Silver filed by the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) and 13 other organizations and denying others. The petition requested that EPA regulate products containing nanoscale silver as pesticides and assess them as new and different from macrosilver products.

EPA will address concerns of potentially different toxicity profiles between macroscale and nanoscale silver ingredients that are found to have pesticidal purposes. The agency will not classify all nanosilver products as pesticides or amend existing data regulations.

This response addresses the lawsuit filed against EPA by ICTA on December 16, 2014, alleging that EPA had failed to respond to the petition. The petition, supporting documents, comments, EPA’s decisions with respect to the petition, and response to significant public comments may be found in the docket for this action at www.regulations.gov, Docket ID # EPA-HQ-OPP-2008-0650.