Overview

Nanotechnology is the understanding, manipulation, and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, which is near-atomic scale, to produce new materials, devices, and structures. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Putting this size into perspective, a single human hair is about 80,000 nanometers in width and a red blood cell is about 7,000 nanometers in diameter.

Engineered nanoscale materials or nanomaterials are materials that have been purposefully manufactured, synthesized, or manipulated to have a size with at least one dimension in the range of approximately 1 to 100 nanometers and that exhibit unique properties determined by their size.

The following questions link to resources that provide safety and health information relevant to nanotechnology.