The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology recently held a public meeting in Washington on the safety of nanotechnologies. According to MSNBC, a report by Terry Davies says that it’s time to start discussing safety laws to protect the public from risks that may develop in the future.

Nanotechnologies involve materials and devices, some of which are hundreds of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Nano materials are measured in nanometers, a billionth of a meter. Some uses of nanotechnology already includes stain-resistant pants and suntan lotions. The particles in these products a less than 100 nanometers in diameter. “A sheet of paper, in comparison, is a whopping 100,000 nanonmeters thick.”

What worries some experts are unpredictable behaviours of nano-scale materials. MSNBC reports that even subtle changes in the size of particles can precipitate wildly different changes in the basic properties of those materials, including their toxicity.

Davies said that “We’ve learned with biotech and nuclear power, if there are not adequate safeguards, the public is going to resist the technology and it won’t meet its potential.”