NanoE-Tox: New and in-depth database concerning ecotoxicity of nanomaterials

Abstract

The increasing production and use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) inevitably results in their higher concentrations in the environment. This may lead to undesirable environmental effects and thus warrants risk assessment. The ecotoxicity testing of a wide variety of ENMs rapidly evolving in the market is costly but also ethically questionable when bioassays with vertebrates are conducted. Therefore, alternative methods, e.g., models for predicting toxicity mechanisms of ENMs based on their physico-chemical properties (e.g., quantitative (nano)structure-activity relationships, QSARs/QNARs), should be developed. While the development of such models relies on good-quality experimental toxicity data, most of the available data in the literature even for the same test species are highly variable. In order to map and analyse the state of the art of the existing nanoecotoxicological information suitable for QNARs, we created a database NanoE-Tox that is available as Supporting Information File 2. The database is based on existing literature on ecotoxicology of eight ENMs with different chemical composition: carbon nanotubes (CNTs), fullerenes, silver (Ag), titanium dioxide (TiO 2), zinc oxide (ZnO), cerium dioxide (CeO 2), copper oxide (CuO), and iron oxide (FeO x ; Fe 2 O 3 , Fe 3 O 4). Altogether, NanoE-Tox database consolidates data from 224 articles and lists altogether 1,518 toxicity values (EC 50 /LC 50 / NOEC) with corresponding test conditions and physico-chemical parameters of the ENMs as well as reported toxicity mechanisms and uptake of ENMs in the organisms. 35% of the data in NanoE-Tox concerns ecotoxicity of Ag NPs, followed by TiO 2 (22%), CeO 2 (13%), and ZnO (10%). Most of the data originates from studies with crustaceans (26%), bacteria (17%), fish (13%), and algae (11%). Based on the median toxicity values of the most sensitive organism (data derived from three or more articles) the toxicity order was as follows: Ag > ZnO > CuO > CeO 2 > CNTs > TiO 2 > FeO x. We believe NanoE-Tox database contains valuable information for ENM environmental hazard estimation and development of models for predicting toxic potential of ENMs. selected from the review by Bondarenko et al. [4]. Numbers below each application category indicate the number and share of papers retrieved. The numerical data are presented in Table S1 (Supporting Information File 1). The bibliometric data search was performed in Thomson Reuters WoS on March 19, 2015.

Carbon nanomaterials: production, impact on plant development, agricultural and environmental applications

“…Phytotoxicology of engineered nanomaterials is a comparatively new field of research, which according to Nowack and Bucheli [116] did not exist before 2007. Accordingly, the potential toxicity of nanoparticles on plants has not yet been widely investigated, and the reported results are frequently descriptive and contradictory with very limited information on the underlying modes of action [117]. Physiological processes potentially affected by interactions with nanomaterials comprise alterations of gene expression [118,119], DNA damage [120,121] and increased formation of ROS [122,123].…”

Natural water as the test medium for Ag and CuO nanoparticle hazard evaluation: An interlaboratory case study

“…textiles (Ag), coatings (Ag and CuO), cosmetics (Ag) and pest control (Ag and CuO) entails elevated release potential into waterbodies (Keller et al, 2013;Nowack et al, 2012). Ag and CuO NPs are the most harmful NPs to freshwater biota (Bondarenko et al, 2013a;Juganson et al, 2015) mainly due to the shed Ag-and Cu-ions (Angel et al, 2013;Heinlaan et al, 2008;Jemec et al, 2016;Newton et al, 2013;Notter et al, 2014;Sakamoto et al, 2015). However, it has been suggested that the environmental hazard of ion-releasing metal NPs cannot be directly extrapolated from that of the free metal ion (Blinova et al, 2013).…”

“…According to the NanoE-Tox database (on 224 nanoecotoxicological papers) (Juganson et al, 2015), just 15% of engineered NP toxicity studies have been performed in natural water and in 5% of the studies, natural organic matter has been used as a natural dispersant/coating of the NPs or with an aim to study its influence on NPs' biological effects. This necessitates studies on NP behaviour and toxicity in the natural aquatic environment as under environmentally relevant conditions, acute toxicity of metal formulations may be significantly different compared to the standardized (laboratory) conditions (Handy et al, 2012).…”

Influence of Dissolution on Fate of Nanoparticles in Freshwater

“…The first five parameters with high relative importance follow the order shown in (1), while the relative importance of the other studied parameters was at least 3 orders of magnitude lower compared to the first fives. [12] k diss > r LSP > ρ SNP > α 2 ≈ Depth water (1) where k diss is the dissolution rate of ENPs in freshwater; r LSP is the radius of larger suspended particles (LSP, > 450 nm) in freshwater; ρ SNP is the density of the suspended particles in freshwater; α 2 is the attachment efficiency between ENPs and LSP; Depth water is the depth of freshwater. [12], [18] C…”

“…Ref. [1]- [3] the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent is the main source of the ENPs in aquatic ecosystems. Ref.…”