[Nanotech] is best understood to mean materials that have the capacity to be fundamentally different, with new chemical, physical, and biological properties that cannot be predicted from the properties of their larger material counterparts.
Yet the same new properties that so excite industry—tiny size, vastly increased surface area to volume ratio, high reactivity—can result in new risks to human health and the environment. These risks essentially take two forms: increased potential toxicity and unprecedented mobility for a manufactured material. (emphasis added)
[A] Dutch government participant said that testing for the presence of ENMs [engineered nanomaterials] in food would be difficult, to judge by the experience of a Dutch testing lab. Lab technicians had mixed ENMs in a food substance and were surprised that they could not find the just-incorporated ENMs using the electronic tunneling microscope commonly used to visualize ENMs.
I don’t think any legal precedent is going to get us anywhere on this. It’s only going to be when the natives, the entire population, is foaming at the mouth, grabbing their pitchforks and shovels and looking for whoever’s responsible.