Narrator: This is Science Today. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the University of California , Davis a grant to establish the San Joaquin Valley Aerosol Health Effects Center , one of five new air pollution research centers. Kent Pinkerton, co-director of the center, says researchers from multiple disciplines will collaborate to study how indoor and outdoor pollutants affect human health – including nanomaterials.

Pinkerton: Nanomaterials are things like carbon nanotubes or nanowires, which are going to have important applications in the computer field in the future. The application of nanomaterials is tremendous – it will be used in thousands of different products in the future. It's still just a very young, emerging area, but actually there has been a tremendous amount of public interest in it because of just our past experience knowing that tiny particles tend to have big effects.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.