Slow progress in tackling nanotechnology's environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks must be addressed by the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), according to evidence presented to legislators. 

The warning was heard by the House of Representatives' Science and Technology Committee as it gears up to reauthorise the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which created the NNI in 2003 with a budget of $3.7 billion (£1.8 billion) over four years. 

The act's reauthorisation is due next year, but while President Bush's 2008 budget requests $1.44 billion for NNI, just over 4 per cent ($58.6 million) would support research on the field's safety implications. For some, that's just not enough. 

'The reauthorisation bill has got to include language that supports the development of a strategic overview as well as a commitment to understand the risks associated with nanotechnology and how to overcome them,' Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the Wilson Center's Project on emerging nanotechnologies, told Chemistry World. 

Paul Zeigler, who chairs the American Chemistry Council's nanotechnology panel, agreed. 'A high quality, comprehensive and prioritised EHS research agenda is still missing,' he testified before the House S&T Committee. The hearing was the committee's third on the topic in three years. 

The proposed plan should focus on risk assessments, promote new interdisciplinary and international research partnerships, and help elucidate the fundamental properties of nanomaterials that impact on the relationship between exposure, dose and response, Zeigler said.  

Although most industry and non-governmental groups agree that the funding level for safety research should be roughly 10 percent of the total budget, one of President Bush's key science advisors disagrees.  

Floyd Kvamme, co-chair of the President's Council of advisors on science and technology, said that the current federal EHS research budget was sufficient. 'Rather than setting arbitrary funding levels or percentages of total spending as a guideline for the EHS budget, NNI agencies should focus on addressing the identified EHS research priorities while at the same time investing in world class applications research,' he said. 

Nevertheless, nanotechnology does raise novel concerns by engineering matter at such a tiny scale, producing effects not always picked up by conventional chemical tests. 'If we assume the only thing that matters is the chemistry, then we will miss something important,' Maynard warned. 

Rebecca Trager, US correspondent for Research Day USA