Letter from Ian Illuminato, Friends of the Earth

This letter refers to the paper ‘‘Rhetorical gamesmanship in the nano debates over sunscreens and nanoparticles’’ by David M. Berube, DOI 10.1007/s11051-008-9362-7 The Journal of Nanoparticle Research recently published online an article by Dr. David M. Berube, which contains a highly critical and inaccurate assessment of a report on the use of nanoparticles in sunscreens published by Friends of the Earth United States in August 2007 (‘‘Rhetorical gamesmanship in the nano debates over sunscreens and nanoparticles’’). Friends of the Earth (FoE) respects Dr. Berube’s right to critically evaluate our report. However, we reject his misrepresentation of our report’s content and purpose. It appears that Dr. Berube was more interested in using his article to attack and discredit FoE and other NGOs concerned about nanotoxicity risks than to engage in a rigorous and fact-based debate about our report’s content. Additionally, we are disappointed that factual errors in his article were not corrected prior to publication. A major problem with Dr. Berube’s article is that he ‘‘reviews’’ one page of a 13-page document and therefore fails to consider the material presented within its proper context. For example, Dr. Berube argues that FoE fails to recognize the inconclusive nature of research investigating nanoparticle penetration of skin—a fact we recognized explicitly on the page prior to the one he chooses to review. In addition, Dr. Berube makes several factual errors in reviewing our report. In Claims 5, 6 and 7, Dr. Berube confuses the references cited by FoE and mistakenly contacts the authors of the wrong studies to query whether their data support the claims made by FoE. We believe that Dr. Berube unfairly characterizes our purpose for creating the report. FoE intended for this report to provide crucial information to the public on the possibly risky, unregulated, unlabelled use of nanoparticles in sunscreens. We freely acknowledge that FoE staff academic expertise is not in nanotoxicology and that we do sometimes make mistakes in reviewing the scientific data. In this report, one of two references for Claim 2 was omitted accidentally; in Claim 11 we stated that free radicals were formed in skin cells by nanoparticles found in sunscreen when one of the studies cited was not conducted on skin cells; and in Claim 14 we mistakenly cited the wrong reference. However, Dr. Berube himself demonstrates that the claims regarding nanotoxicity risks made in our report were overwhelmingly supported by the scientific studies cited. See also DOI 10.1007/s11051-008-9362-7 and DOI 10.1007/s11051-008-9443-7.