UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution issues report on health impacts of nanomaterials

The United Kingdom's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution issued its latest report, entitled "Novel Materials in the Environment: The case of nanotechnology" this morning (it is available here: http://www.rcep.org.uk/novelmaterials.htm). Commission members are concerned that nanotechnology is being used more and more in everyday life, but that regulations lag behind its use. This is partly due to the fact that knowledge about the health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology applications lag behind nanomaterial innovation. The report calls on the British government to recognize the divide between innovation and knowledge in this area, to which the government must (by law) respond. This is extremely interesting for anyone interested in that other link between innovation and health - not the one that makes health care provision all the more expensive, but the one that has the potential to make it all the more necessary in the future.