Models for assessing engineered nanomaterial fate and behaviour in the aquatic environment

Abstract

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Using problem formulation for fit‐for‐purpose pre‐market environmental risk assessments of regulated stressors

“…The sludge that is transferred to agricultural land will contain an exposure‐relevant form of the ENM that is very different from the pristine material that was originally manufactured. Similar transformation issues will occur in soils and waters, and they will be important for driving the environmental exposure, uptake and eventual effects as detailed below (Hendren et al., ; Williams et al., ).…”

“…To address the abovementioned challenges, the EU H2020 project NanoFASE (http://www.NanoFASE.EU) has worked towards moving focus away from just the physical and chemical properties of pristine engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) as the driving parameters for fate modelling and towards developing an understanding of the functional and behaviour patterns of ‘release relevant ENMs’ in exposure‐relevant environments and chemistries, and how to include them in exposure modelling (see Williams et al., ). Achieving good ERAs means aiming to provide more realistic exposure scenarios and at the same time ensuring that the hazard test results used for PNECs do represent worst‐case exposure to the relevant nanoforms.…”

“…For example, labile cores of Cu or Ag will often have been sulfidised and the original coatings and shapes degraded or modified (Gogos et al, 2017(Gogos et al, , 2018. The flow to various environmental compartments needs to be modelled carefully taking the different fate parameter of the different forms into account (Adam and Nowack, 2017;Adam et al, 2018;Williams et al, 2019). Once within the soil, the nanomaterial forms relevant to environmental exposure (i.e.…”

NO2 and natural organic matter affect both soot aggregation behavior and sorption of S-metolachlor

“…It should be noted that relatively high soot concentrations were used in this study, and in many scenarios hetero-aggregation with other suspended particles in the natural environment is expected to outweigh the importance of the homo-aggregation investigated here. 4,31,32 However, the investigation of hetero-aggregation was not in the scope of this study and may be an interesting subject of further investigations building on the results presented here.…”

Nanomaterial Transformations in the Environment: Effects of Changing Exposure Forms on Bioaccumulation and Toxicity

“…There is an increased understanding of the dynamic changes occurring for NMs during release, in waste handling systems (e.g., landfill, sewage treatment works, incineration), in transfer (e.g., air and water) and sink (sediment and soils) environmental compartments. [ 14–16 ] This knowledge has been used to develop multimedia models for predicting environmental concentrations in air, soil, water and sediment using mechanistic models that integrate different processes such as dissolution, homoagglomeration and hetroagglomeration and particle attachment. [ 16–20 ] Consequently, it has been recognized that during their environmental life‐time, NMs undergo transformation reactions that change the form to which species will be exposed.…”