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

Katre Juganson; Angela Ivask; Irina Blinova; Monika Mortimer; Anne Kahru

doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.183

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

Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2015 Aug 25:6:1788-804. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.6.183. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Katre Juganson¹, Angela Ivask², Irina Blinova³, Monika Mortimer⁴, Anne Kahru³

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia ; Department of Chemistry, Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia tee 15, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia.
² Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia ; Mawson Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, 5095 South Australia, Australia.
³ Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia.
⁴ Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia ; Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-5131, United States.

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 1. The database is based on existing literature on ecotoxicology of eight ENMs with different chemical composition: carbon nanotubes (CNTs), fullerenes, silver (Ag), titanium dioxide (TiO2), zinc oxide (ZnO), cerium dioxide (CeO2), copper oxide (CuO), and iron oxide (FeO x ; Fe2O3, Fe3O4). Altogether, NanoE-Tox database consolidates data from 224 articles and lists altogether 1,518 toxicity values (EC50/LC50/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 TiO2 (22%), CeO2 (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 > CeO2 > CNTs > TiO2 > 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.

Keywords: REACH; Thomson Reuters Web of Science; nanoparticles; physico-chemical properties; toxicity mechanisms.