Exposure to Nanoparticles - Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Nanotechnology - page 302

8

Exposure to Nanoparticles

Robert J. Aitken , Karen S. Galea , C. Lang Tran and John W. Cherrie

Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

8.1 Introduction

Nanotechnology is a rapidly evolving and expanding discipline and has aroused
growing media and public interest. Articles appear daily in the scientifi c and popular
press and on a host of websites dedicated to the fi eld. New companies, often spin
outs from university research departments, are being formed and are fi nding no
shortage of investors willing to back their ideas and products. New materials are
being discovered or produced and astonishing claims are being made concerning
their properties, behaviours and applications.
While much of the current 'hype' is highly speculative, there is no doubt that
worldwide, governments and major industrial companies are committing signifi cant
resources for research into the development of nanometre scale processes, materi-
als and products. In Europe, the Seventh Framework Programme has nanotechnol-
ogy as one of its seven main thematic programmes (www.cordis.lu). The programme,
' Nanotechnology and nanosciences, knowledge-based multifunctional materials and
new production processes and devices ' has a budget of some

4500 million for the
period 2006 - 2013 ( http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/nanotechnology_en.
html). A similar large scale programme, the National Nanotechnology Initiative
(NNI), is running in the United States with a budget of approximately $1000 million
for 2005 (http://www.nano.gov/) and similar in future years. In the United Kingdom,
the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has run the 'Micro and nanotech-
nology manufacturing initiative' with a budget of more than £90 million
( http://www.dti.gov.uk/nanotechnology/ ).

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