When Wisconsin lawmaker Terese Berceau first learned about nanomaterials a few years ago, she found there were many nano-based products on the market, but little research into their possible health effects. “The horse was already out of the barn,” she said, but she found it hard to get anyone interested. “It is a difficult subject to get people feeling that, ‘Geez, we should do something now.’ ”
Wisconsin Assemblywoman
Terese Berceau
But she worked at it, and her concern has paid off. The Wisconsin legislature just set up a study committee to gather information about nanotechnology and consider the policy implications. Berceau hopes that will lead to a registry, so health and environmental officials can track how the materials are being used, and how manufacturers and researchers are disposing of them.
Wisconsin is one of the first states to undertake this effort. Nano-enhanced consumer, environmental and health products have spawned a red-hot industry. Across the country, the use of nanomaterials—substances manufactured on a tiny scale, measured in billionths of a meter—is largely unmonitored and unregulated. Nanotechnology manipulates matter on a near-atomic scale in order to develop nanomaterials with surprising new properties, such as strength and super-conductivity. The results have ranged from super-strong sunscreen and bicycle frames to life-saving drugs.
“If we’ve learned anything from the BP oil spill [in the Gulf of Mexico], it’s that you should have a plan, that you shouldn’t just hope that nothing bad happens. You should have a plan so you don’t have serious consequences for public or environmental health,” Berceau said.
D.K. Funkhouser 