Had the dangers been known in advance, Colvin said, manufacturing methods could have been cleaned up, or more care could have gone into storing the chemicals.
Scientists are also worried that the public's first exposure to nanotechnology may come through popularizations such as Crichton's book, in which swarms of molecule-size, self-replicating nanobots threaten humanity.
A widely circulated article, written three years ago in Wired magazine by Sun Microsystems scientist Bill Joy, aroused concern by offering a scenario in which specially engineered nanomachines could selectively kill certain people or genetically distinct groups of people.
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