To address some of the concerns about risk and regulation an international group of scientists from both the United States and Europe is now calling for a mandatory frame work for dealing with nanomaterials used by commercial companies, but one problem with introducing regulation is that different countries and industries have very different approaches to how they deal with possible risks, and that's even if the scientists have worked out exactly what the risks are.

It's very much about the science that we've simply got to stop there; we've got to work out what is difference and what could possibly cause harm. We've got to work out the rules of how we use information, how we make wise sensible choices when it comes to regulating materials. If you are regulating things you won't make sure you'll protect people we don't want to regulate because it just harms the industry so the people end up losing jobs, they don't have the products they want.

The rise of nanotechnology holds a promise of a new cleaner industrial revolution for the world, but the dangers are clear. If the scientists and regulators don't get a right the risk could overweight the benefits all of us as consumers of the world's newest technologies.

Labeling and levying consumers know that some products contain nanomaterials, they are highly experimental and that they might potentially have certain effects is a bare right for people. Many activists are concerned about possible contamination of the environment of the human body by nano particles. For example, carbon nanotubes that are ready used in products from tennis rackets to flame retardants.

It's the question of whether or not these particles migrate outside of the product and end up in environment, and we don't know that for sure because we don't have these studies; those studies just aren't being supported enough. If you think of, for example, the United States - there is about two billion and a half dollars a year that goes into investing in nanotechnology researching development, and out of that billion and a half dollars the government's only approved about two or three per cent of that to go into EHS studies or Environmental, Health and Safety studies. So, we really need increased monetary funds to go towards investigating what some of this risk might be.