With nanotechnology increasingly being used in various consumer goods, , tennis rackets, and , the is calling for a national plan to identify and associated with nanotechnology-enabled products.

The council did not study whether current uses of nanomaterials represent a risk to the public.

"The current plan catalogs nano-risk research across several federal agencies, but it does not present an overarching research strategy needed to gain public acceptance and realize the promise of nanotechnology," said committee chair David Eaton, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the , in a statement.

Nanotechnology is the control of matter - generally creating structures or functional devices - at the molecular or atomic level. The council reported that there already are more than 600 products on the market that use nanomaterials.

In May, some researchers and analysts called on the federal government to fund a study of the potential health , which are the building blocks of nanotechnology. The request for funding came just as the released a study showing that some forms of , much like asbestos does. The study shows that long, thin multiwalled carbon nanotubes, which look like asbestos fibers, actually behave like asbestos and can cause cancer of the lung lining.