Background: Nanomaterials are suspected of causing health problems, as published studies on nanotoxicology indicate. On the other hand, some of these materials, such as nanostructured pyrogenic and precipitated synthetic amorphous silica (SAS) and silica gel, have been used for decades without safety concerns in industrial, commercial, and consumer applications. However, in addition to many in vivo and in vitro studies that have failed to demonstrate the intrinsic toxicity of SAS, articles periodically emerge, in which biological effects of concern have been described. Even though most of these studies do not meet high-quality standards and do not always use equivalent test materials or standardized test systems, the results often trigger substance re-evaluation. To put the results into perspective, an extensive literature study was carried out and an example of amorphous silica will be used to try to unravel the reliability from the unreliable results.
Methods: A systematic search of studies on nanotoxicological effects has been performed covering the years 2013 to 2018. The identified studies have been evaluated for their quality regarding material and method details, and the data have been curated and put into a data collection. This review deals only with investigations on amorphous silica.
Results: Of 18,162 publications 1,217 have been selected with direct reference to experiments with synthetically produced amorphous silica materials. The assessment of these studies based on defined criteria leads to a further reduction to 316 studies, which have been included in this systematic review. Screening for quality with well-defined quantitative criteria following the GUIDE nano concept reveals only 27.3% has acceptable quality. Overall, the in vitro and in vivo data showed low or no toxicity of amorphous silica. The data shown do not support the hypothesis of dependency of biological effects on the primary particle size of the tested materials.
Conclusion: This review demonstrates the relatively low quality of most studies published on nanotoxicological issues in the case of amorphous silica. Moreover, mechanistic studies are often passed off or considered toxicological studies. In general, standardized methods or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines are rarely used for toxicological experiments. As a result, the significance of the published data is usually weak and must be reevaluated carefully before using them for regulatory purposes.
Keywords: database; hazard assessment; nanomaterials; nanostructured particles; nanotoxicology; study quality; synthetic amorphous silica.
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