Nanolessons for Revamping Government Oversight of Technology: Nanotechnology Is Changing the World. Now the Federal Government Must Radically Change How It Oversees This and Other Technologies to Best Protect Human Health and the Environment‪.‬

In recent decades, the capabilities of U.S. federal agencies responsible for environmental health and safety have steadily eroded. The agencies cannot perform their basic functions now, and they are even less able to cope with the new challenges being created by rapid advances in science and technology. Nanotechnology provides a perfect case for considering ways to redesign the way in which government oversees science and technology in order to protect public health and safety. Nanotechnology involves working at the scale of single atoms and molecules. The nanoscale is roughly 1 to 100 nanometers. For comparison, there are 25.4 million nanometers in an inch, or 10 million nanometers in a centimeter. Nanoscale materials can have different chemical, physical, electrical, and biological characteristics than their larger-scale counterparts, and they often behave differently than do conventional materials, even when the basic material (say, carbon or silver) is the same.