Issue 6, 2024

Practical considerations to optimize aquatic testing of particulate material, with focus on nanomaterials

Abstract

Aquatic testing of particulate materials (PMs), e.g., nanomaterials (NMs) and microplastics (MPs), poses inherent challenges potentially hindering the application of existing test guidelines (TGs). Those TGs are primarily designed for hazard assessment of the dissolvable form of a material, whereas the guidance document on aquatic and sediment toxicological testing of NM (OECD Guidance Document 317) encourages the inclusion of potential colloidal fractions in the assessment. A prerequisite for the testing of PMs is the preparation of stable dispersions. However, testing difficulties may result from the fact that nano-scale PMs are inherently unstable when dispersed in test media, leading to the need for differentiation of potential chemical vs. physical effects caused by the tested material. Aquatic testing of unstable PMs will likely result in inconsistent and non-uniform uptake and exposure scenarios and thus effects observed in the respective test systems. Maintaining stable exposure conditions is often very challenging given the constantly changing size of the PM and its agglomerates, requiring observed endpoints to be based on measured concentrations and particle size distributions present in the water phase, while neglecting agglomerated and settled particulates. In this paper we describe the current state of PM-testing, demonstrate PM-specific challenges in aquatic testing (e.g., test duration, physical effects, instability, biodegradation, bioaccumulation) with a focus on NMs, considering a set of most relevant TGs, and provide proposed testing considerations to optimize aquatic testing of PMs.

Graphical abstract: Practical considerations to optimize aquatic testing of particulate material, with focus on nanomaterials

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Perspective
Submitted
22 ม.ค. 2567
Accepted
15 เม.ย. 2567
First published
26 เม.ย. 2567
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2024,11, 2352-2371

Practical considerations to optimize aquatic testing of particulate material, with focus on nanomaterials

S. Luederwald, J. Davies, T. F. Fernandes, A. Praetorius, J. Sergent, K. Tatsi, J. Tell, N. Timmer and S. Wagner, Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2024, 11, 2352 DOI: 10.1039/D4EN00056K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements