Introduction

Global funding for nanotechnology was nearly $12 billion in 2006, and investments in the nanotechnology industry approximately quadrupled from 2004 to 2006. In recent years, overly optimistic forecasters predicted that nanotechnology investments would reach $2.6 trillion by 2014. With the nanotechnology hype cooling a bit, more sober estimates place the global market for nanotechnology at $27 billion by 2013, the result of a compound annual growth rate of 16.4%. These same, more realistic market assessments, however, project that over the next 5 years, electronic, biomedical, and consumer applications of nanotechnology will show very high growth rates between 30% and 60%. Currently with more than $50 billion in products ranging from pharmaceuticals and cosmetics to tools and electronics, we are seeing the transition of nanotechnology as it moves from the lab to the marketplace. According to a nanotechnology-based consumer product inventory conducted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, as of March 2011, there were 1,317 products produced by 1288 companies located in 30 counties. The lion's share of these products (approximately 60%) fell under the heading of health and fitness and into the subcategories of personal care, clothing, and cosmetics.

This revolution in atomic and molecular engineering promises many environmental and human health benefits, such as dramatic improvements in efficiency, reduced resource use, diminished waste production, and astounding improvements in medical diagnostics and therapeutics. Yet, the risks posed by nanotechnology to ecological and environmental health have not been rigorously assessed in any organism, at the individual, community or ecosystem scale. Without these data, a meaningful regulatory framework to both protect human and environmental health and safety from the unintended consequences of nanomaterial use and guide ongoing development of nanomaterials cannot be formulated.