Toxic warning for nano industry

Nanotechnology companies need to do more to understand potential toxic effects of their products, a senior UK researcher has warned.

Professor Anthony Seaton, of Aberdeen University, said "very little" was still known about the health impacts of particles engineered at small scales.

His concern over nanoparticles covered production and lab workers as well as consumers, he told a conference.

Businesses counter by saying there are already strict safety regulations.

"It's not like nanotechnology is appearing totally out of the blue in a completely non-regulated framework," said Dr Paul Reip, interim spokesperson for the Nanotechnology Industry Association (NIA) and founder of Qinetiq Nanomaterials.

"We're concerned as anybody else about the safety of our colleagues, workers and the products that we sell," he told the BBC News website.

Some of those existing regulations are imposed by the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is in the process of extending the framework to take account of the unique properties of many nanomaterials.

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