It's not often that corporate superpowers like DuPont and environmental activists like Environmental Defense see eye to eye on anything, but it now appears that nanotechnology is bringing them together.

The two are leading a group of 15 corporations and environmental action groups that have sent a letter to each member of the U.S. Senate and House Appropriations Committees calling on Congress to increase funding to examine the health and environmental implications of nanotechnology. Here's some of what the letter has to say:

"While industry, academic, and government scientists continue to vigorously explore nanotechnology's potential applications in a wide variety of fields, such as groundwater cleanup and cancer therapy, research on nanotechnology's potential health and environmental implications has failed to keep up."

"Although the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has an annual budget of more than $1 billion, health and environmental implications research currently accounts for less than 4% of that amount ($38.5 million for FY06)."

For DuPont and Environmental Defense, the letter is one component of a larger agreement to collaborate on a framework for the responsible development, production, use and disposal of nanomaterials.

"The intent of this framework," according to a DuPont statement, "is to define a systematic and disciplined process that can be used to identify, manage and reduce potential health, safety and environmental risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages. This framework will then be pilot-tested on specific nano-scale materials or applications of commercial interest to DuPont."

The collaboration puts Environmental Defense in line with more moderate groups like Greenpeace , and further marginalizes aggressively anti-nanotech groups like the Canadian environmental organization ETC, which has called for a moratorium on nanotechnology until it can be proven safe.