A House Science subcommittee this week will summon officials from the president’s interagency office on nanotechnology for a third time to discuss progress on establishing a federal nanotechnology risk research strategy — an effort many stakeholders say is not moving quickly enough.

The Oct. 31 hearing is another attempt to speed the process along or else to get recommendations on ways to alter the efforts of the National Nanotechnology Initiative to establish priorities for researching the potential risks of engineering and producing materials at the molecular level, said an aide to Research and Science Education Subcommittee Chairman Brian Baird, D-Wash.

Nanoscale materials — tiny particles in the range of about one to 100 nanometers — are contained in more than 580 medical, cosmetic, electronic and automotive products, according to the Washington-based Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

Full committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., has said, “Prudence suggests the need for urgency in having the science of health and environmental implications catch up to, or even better surpass, the pace of commercialization.”

In November 2005, the full committee met for the first time to discuss the need for a federal strategy to establish and fund research on the potential environmental, health and safety risks of engineered nanomaterials.

At the subsequent full committee hearing in September 2006, the interagency group released a document that legislators on both sides of the aisle called late and inadequate.

The working group that is managing the government’s effort is known as NEHI, for Nanotechnology Environmental Health Initiative. The group released an interim research prioritization document for public comment in August. A chorus of researchers, manufacturers, environmentalists and lawmakers said the new document still did not set priorities, and that faster action is needed, even while acknowledging it’s a difficult job to corral the 27 agencies involved.

David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, said in a submitted comment, “NEHI seems to have taken what was a long laundry list of nearly seventy research activities and shortened it to a numbered laundry list of twenty-five research activities.”

The American Chemistry Council submitted comments on the document saying, “... the current priority setting process is tediously slow and at present, incomplete.”

E. Clayton Teague, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office, the administrative arm of the NNI, has been asked to testify at the hearing. He said in September of the interim document: “We have put a huge amount of both expertise and time into moving ahead to ensure the research gets done in a highly coordinated and highly collaborative manner across all the different agencies.”

The subcommittee has asked witnesses to make recommendations on ways to improve the process. Kristen Kulinowski, director of the International Council on Nanotechnology, said, “I think there is a lot more expertise that the government could draw on from outside government,” such as scientists working in nonprofits, industry and universities.

Richard Denison, senior scientist at Environmental Defense, said part of the problem is that NNI doesn’t have the authority to direct member agencies. “Congress could give it the authority, or create an entity with that authority.”

Also, he said the NNI’s conflicting functions, of promoting nanotechnology and addressing potential risk, should be separated.

Not only is nanotechnology a complex field of science and an intricate regulatory challenge, even the roles within the federal government are hard to follow. The National Science and Technology Council coordinates science and technology policies across the federal government. The council’s Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology subcommittee oversees the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NNI seeks to coordinate the nanotechnology research and development efforts of 27 federal agencies. The National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, or NNCO, provides technical and administrative support to the NSET subcommittee. And the working group producing the document with the input of representatives from 18 federal agencies and NNCO staff is called NEHI.