There is currently a lot of attention being paid to the behavior
and effects of engineered NP, but there is still only limited
solid information. Nonetheless, there is quite a vast amount of
work being done with natural NP, e.g. soot and aquatic colloids,
and the knowledge gained there will be of invaluable
help in assessing the fate of engineered NP. Analytical
methods developed for natural NP are now beginning to be applied
to engineered NP. The discussion of NP in the environment
is therefore different from organic micropollutants,
where often advances in analytical techniques and detection
of compounds in the environment have been the starting point
for scientific and public discussions. For NP the public discussion
predates the possibility of their analysis.